


Sleeping At Last

by bitelikefire (theoleo)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Background Relationships, Flashbacks, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Supernatural Elements, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:33:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4905601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoleo/pseuds/bitelikefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This must be a dream.</p><p>NOTE: This fic is not abandoned. It will be completed, and most likely will be reuploaded as a full piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> No words can explain how grateful I am for Brenda. She's currently helping me beta this monster fic and you guys should send her flowers. So thank you, thank you. 
> 
> The Supernatural aspect is taken directly from an episode from the show (2.20). The episode is called "What Is and What Should Never Be." Which if you've seen it, is a huge warning flag. Also, please take note of the tags.
> 
> Lastly, the apartment mentioned below is a real place. The address is legit, and I highly recommend you guys checking it out for the visual. Here is the link. [ here](https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/greenwich-village/45-east-9th-street/5289)

_In one timeline we kiss but the stars don’t come down._  
_In another you set a world on fire for me but I perish in the flames._  
_Another and we’re strangers on a busy street, brushing by close enough to send each other reeling off balance but not stopping._  
_Somewhere there’s a final space where your hand on my face is the punchy climax to an epic saga, where the way our mouths meet takes the breath right out of people’s throats._  
_One universe has us right, of all the millions stacked on millions._  
_So it’s not this one. I can live with that._  
_The world is full of wonders and a hundred years ago the moon was too much to dream of touching._  
_Look how far we’ve come._  
_Turn over your shoulder and just look._  
_Maybe we’ll come across each other at the turning of the century, racing across the breaches between worlds._  
_I’ll build my life on that maybe._

_-Elisabeth Hewer_

* * *

 

In moments like these – when his bones feel old and weak and he's tired from carrying his ancient soul; when his skin feels like it’s stretched tight, he thinks about 1943.  
  
His thoughts are always of Erskine. His wrinkled skin and white hair. His heavy accent and the sombreness in his voice when he'd reminisced about his invaded countryside home. Steve and Erskine sitting across from each other in the middle of the night with schnapps in hand.

Steve can’t shake the way Erskine had pointed directly at his heart. A solid, firm reminder -- to stay the man Erskine had seen him as.  _Not_ the potential the government and others saw him as. Not beneath the bones, but _with_ the fragile skin and bones. The young man who didn’t know how to quit and was dogged in every way. Sticking his nose in business that wasn’t his to get involved in, but he did it anyway. Meeting a bully in an alleyway knowing he’d get beaten, but refusing to stand down. Enlisting again and again, even when it was illegal, because he believed it was the right thing to do. Lying to rows of doctors and officials with a straight face and an even voice. Even to Erskine. And still, Erskine pointed anyway. Already seeing his heart.  _Don't change. Stay who you are. A good man._ A pledge, a promise.  
  
Steve thinks, now, after bashing another man’s skull against a stone wall after another dead lead, that he very much _isn't_ a good man now. If he ever was. He doesn’t let himself think about the shame. 

 

* * *

 

There’s light swing music playing softly from inside the apartment in Croatia and the smell of cooking vegetables.

Steve grinds to a halt. Back straightening, he strains all his senses. Listening. Sam nearly collides into his back. The overwhelming sense of déjà vu is making his heart thud. Sam tenses behind him, sensing something is wrong.

Steve had chosen his apartment back in Washington specifically; the window situated to assist in investigating a security breach without being seen. The hallway and kitchen walls playing as strategic blindsides.

This place, though, has absolutely none of that. It was one of the things about it that had made him hesitate to squat here with Sam for the past three days, but they were desperate. And, well, it never really matters in the end, if _they_ decide they wanted to kill you. Fury still got shot like an animal in front of him.

Which is why he thinks, screw the idea of subterfuge, and opens the door slowly, Sam poised on the other side of the door frame, finger ready on the trigger of his gun.

“Nat?” Steve says, eyebrows knitting over Sam’s loud “Jesus!” as he lowers the pistol.

She’s standing in the kitchen doorway, a burner cell held to her ear as she turns. She smiles before murmuring low into the mouthpiece, “you too,” and drops it to the floor. It crushes savagely under the heel of her boot.

Sam looks just as poleaxed as Steve feels. They finally get their feet to cooperate and step into the room, shutting the door behind.  “Hey fellas. You hungry?”

* * *

 

She says she ate already, the large pot containing beef stroganoff, and opens a thin laptop on the counter. Her green eyes move to Steve when she catches him staring; the very obvious question silently said between them. Her answer is to quirk her head and nudge his foot – _eat first, then we talk._

It reminds him of the majority of his childhood; Sarah Rogers watching Steve shovel in heaps of warm cabbage so he could run outside where Bucky was waiting for him. It was a sure fire way into earning an exasperated, yet loving, _‘Steven-god-spare-me-Rogers’_ look to the sky by his mother, and Bucky laughing so hard he doubled over.

He’s not above that now, spearing the last gravy-soaked mushroom into his mouth before setting his fork down, “Natasha – “

“I found something,” she says, and turns the laptop around for them to look.

* * *

 

By ‘something’, Natasha means a seemingly abandoned facility on the outskirts of Bulgaria she had been monitoring for any signs of breach or activity.

“What did you find?” Steve asks, moving his seat closer to her as she angles the computer his way.

“Nothing. Which is why it caught my attention. HYDRA likes to hide in plain sight. This isn’t that.”

Sam blinks. Steve looks up, frowning.

“This building is one of the top three HYDRA facilities. If you cut off one head, this is one of the others that would take its place. We’ve taken down one of them already in Sekovia,” she flicks a look to Steve knowingly, “and the second was destroyed _brilliantly_ by the Winter Soldier.”

 _Bucky,_ Steve thinks, angry. _His name is Bucky_. Sam sees the clench of Steve’s fist and steps in. “So you’re saying out of all of the HYDRA bases that have been blowing up left and right, this one is the last one that hasn’t?” Sam asks, confused. “Why?”

“I highly doubt it’s the last one,” Natasha says dryly, “but yes. It doesn’t make sense. Or, maybe it does. I remember…” She pauses, lips pursed. Uncharacteristic.  “Rumors. The locals believe it’s haunted.”

Steve tears his eyes from the satellite view on the screen to share a mirrored look with Sam and turn back to her. “Haunted,” he repeats.

“Yes. I haven’t been there since ’92. SHIELD dates the last time it was known to be an active research base to 2001. After 9/11, HYDRA cleared out for obvious reasons. When they went back to settle, no one was ever reported to come back out.”  She leans back with a one shouldered shrug. “We won’t know unless it’s scoped out.”

Sam hmms. “If the whole country thinks it’s cursed or whatever, it _would_ be a smart place to regroup.”

Steve nods supportively, but fights against the tight swallow he can barely shove down. The fortress on the screen eerily resembles the HYDRA base in D.C. One of the earlier ones he and Sam took apart.

The green haze and electric-wired gates. The chair and steel clamps that painted the picture perfectly in Steve’s head; waking him up gasping, with a piercing pain in his chest at the mere thought of Bucky trapped in its cold steel.

“You coming with?” Steve asks her, after taking a breath _– c'mon punk, inhale deep, exhale slowly, one more time?_

Natasha shakes her head, “I’ll lead you guys there, but I still have things to take care of.” The apology is there, unspoken. Steve understands, offers her a smile. Waits until she gives one back.

* * *

 

After she leaves, offering a peck on the cheek to both of them, Sam turns to Steve after bolting the door shut. Doing what he does best and brings the giant elephant hiding behind a futon to attention.

“He could be on his way there. Or, we could pick up a trail. It’ll be hard. Dude is always, oh, I don’t know, _one hundred steps_ ahead of us?” He nudges Steve with an elbow,  “and you can take out your anger on some Nazi skulls instead of that poor innocent mirror we used to have in the bathroom.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, cringing a little, “that was -- I’m sorry, it’s just been…” _Tough. Getting worse. Every moment we turn up empty I feel like I’m dying. I’ve been trying to walk with no limbs for so long_ –

“Tough,” he finishes, and tries to make his smile look more authentic. But, by the way Sam’s eyes flicker almost sadly, he knows he’s failed. Faking has become so second nature he can’t remember what it’s like to mean it. Somewhere lost in the black and white reels in the Smithsonian. Trapped and frozen in time seventy five -- a million -- years ago.

* * *

 

It happens like this:

If Steve had laughed at the idea of the building being haunted before, he’s sure as hell not laughing now.

Everything about the facility is giving him bad vibes. Every ingrained instinct blaring warning signs, screaming at him that it’s a trap, to get out. All the way down to his steel-toed boots.

Sam’s first reaction on Steve’s command that they split up had been a sputter and a criticizing look. Like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. But he still had flown up. They’d agreed to meet at a rendezvous point in ten minutes.

From what Steve can tell, the control room is still operational, but hasn’t been activated in years. Cobwebs and heavy layers of dust filming every inch of the boards, but the chairs aren’t toppled over and the screens aren’t cracked. There’s no sign of struggle. There’s no indication of an escape and salvage made in the midst of a blitz attack, and it’s beginning to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It’s as if everyone just…disappeared. No trace to be found.

Sam copies him. It's the same scene upstairs. “There could be a lot of useful intel left behind,” Steve concludes, moving to the elevator to start a scan of the lower levels. The elevator indicates just one level below. B.

“Tony could get through it faster,” Sam says, even though they both know the answer that's coming.

“No, best we keep this between us,” Steve punches the button.

“Ste-“

* * *

 

It happens like this:

The elevator doesn’t stop at B.

The button he'd pushed is still lit up as the compartment continues to travel – down, down, down, down into the belly of the building. The temperature sinking and Sam’s voice shorting out.

The door starts to slide open, but gets stuck after three inches. Steve has to slide the edge of his shield between the spaces, shoves it open with a loud groan. 

Dim green and yellow lights come alive, flickering on as Steve steps out, shield already poised.

* * *

 

Bodies. Rows upon rows of bodies, strung up by the wrists, and toes barely able to touch the cool floor. Gaunt pale faces, with dried caked lips, staring unseeing in the distance. They don’t look possible. Lifeless marionettes cut at the strings.

Steve breaks into a tip-toed run, heart rate climbing at the sight, scanning for signs of life even though it’s impossible, and does a quick count – forty, no. Forty five.  Young women and men, teenagers, elderly and middle aged. It’s impossible, he thinks, to know whether they've aged while being kept here or had been taken at the age they are now. 

 _Human experiments_? Steve thinks wildly, moving through the mass grave. _More HYDRA serums being tested?_

The ages and nationalities of the bodies are too varied to be completely HYDRA. There’s a young man who looks no older than fourteen, long dead and skin ashen. His blood bag is empty. A heavy sickness settles in his stomach. There are needles stuck in various pulse points on each body. The nearest to him, a young girl, skin drained and bone white, has her head tilted at inhuman angle, a soft smile on her lips and a needle pinned to the side of her throat. The IV bag strung up higher next to her wrists is half drained, sides of the clear bag stained and the blood muddled black.

He quickly makes his way down the aisle, the heat sensor on his uniform only picking up his own signature, but he needs to make sure. He searches the array of faces, has to, even when it begins to feel hopeless. And then he sees it, right at the corner of his left eye.

Steve whirls. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice at first. Not when he swore; promised; he would know in the marrow of his bones forever. Even when he was long gone. Would be able to recognize _him,_ even amongst the smoke and impossibility of everything.

Bucky. _Bucky,_ held up, and the only one who has both arms fastened with silver chains rather than with zip ties. He’s being kept at the furthest end. His body isn’t his own. Limbs moving like he’s walking at the bottom of the ocean.

Steve races to his side, frantic, heart trying wildly to escape his ribcage and get to Bucky's. To trade with it,will it back into existence.

“Oh god,” Steve croaks, throat immeasurably dry as he rips off his gloves and searches for a pulse. Bucky's head is bowed, hair shorter than before, like he'd taken scissors to it and chopped it off in one go. The uniform is different, but he’s in all black. No visible weapons.

“No. No, no, no, Bucky,” Steve says over and over. It takes him back further than he wants to remember. Bucky strapped to a table with glazed eyes and needles deep in his skin. Delirium heavy in his voice.  

_How many times am I going to be late? How many times am I going to keep doing this to him?_

Bucky says nothing now, but Steve finds the lazy pulse that comes in a sludgy pattern. The relief is staggering. He holds Bucky's head up in both palms, rough beard prickly and damp in his hands. His eyes are half open and unseeing, mouth parted. Steve presses an ear close and catches the rattled in and out of his breath. He’s alive. There’s an ugly scar on the side of his face and his cheekbone looks like it’s been cracked, but he’s still the best thing Steve has seen in all his years. Bucky's alive.

He’s alive and there’s time. During all those sparse days before nose-diving into the Arctic, all Steve had prayed for was more time. For the train door to have held Bucky’s weight longer to reach his hand. To have gotten up quicker so Bucky wouldn't have had to reach for his shield and protect him. The relief now is crippling – he’s not too late.

The needle is pierced in Bucky's jugular. Steve swallows down the wave of violent fury, and makes to remove it –

He’s slammed sideways across the temple with a strength he hasn’t felt since the hellicarrier.  The force of the blow throws him hard onto the floor. But his instincts are quicker, and he gets up on a roll, arm braced to bludgeon a skull to death if that’s what it takes.

His right arm is frozen; held in place.

When he’s struck again, his head cracks against the floor and white spots dance in his vision. Cold grey hands clasp his neck, and his head hits the marble ground with a sickening sound he only hears the beginnings of before it’s all gone.

* * *

 

Steve is really beginning to hate waking up in hospitals.

The monitors are making their usual beeping sounds as consciousness slowly, and agonizingly, returns. His whole body feels like he's been shot. Weak in ways he hasn’t felt in years. Deliriously, Steve half laughs, but it sounds like a parched gasp – _on your left, right, Sam?_

Sam.

Steve jack-knifes out of bed, the white room fuzzy and spiralling. He can’t begin to see straight, but already is making to throw himself out of bed. _Bucky._ Jesus, God –

“Woah, woah, easy there.”

He can’t control his reaction to that voice. Steve’s bare feet stutter on the cool floor. He’s almost too afraid to turn to know for sure. Almost.

But then he doesn’t have to, because Bucky does it for him. Stands up from where he was sitting, hand reaching for Steve’s shoulder and gently pushing him back to bed.

“You okay? Shit, baby, your heart's pounding.” He places the flat of his palm over Steve’s chest and Steve’s knees buckle as he drops onto the hospital bed. Agape. Brain shot.

“I’m gonna call in the nurse. You want me to call the – no, don’t answer that, I’m gonna call the nurse,” Bucky says and pushes a button attached to the side of the bed. He’s dressed in a cozy dark blue sweater that’s a size too big, and dark jeans. His hair is cut the same way it was during the war, but finely tousled, without pomade. He blinks down to Steve, who is openly staring – has to be staring – and like a Pavlovian response, his heart rate spikes up.

Bucky looks at the monitor and the climbing numbers. “Stevie?” All hint of teasing gone. He crowds Steve's space, half sitting on the side of the bed. “Steve, you need to calm down. I’m here.” And easy as nothing, bends to kiss him square on the mouth.

Steve doesn’t move _. It’s happened. It’s finally happened,_ _I’ve lost it,_ Steve thinks numbly to himself, staring up at Bucky’s worried face. Steve dimly remembers this feeling. His skin feels cold, the drastic change of body temperature making a sense of nausea creep in. But at least it’s familiar.

Bucky takes his hands, and Steve feels the creeping nausea and confusion heighten at the sight of his two flesh hands. They’re warm and dry against his cold and clammy ones. Bucky gives him that smile he’s known all his life. The one he gave when Steve had caught pneumonia and the nuns hadn't even bothered to assign him homework because the rumor mill was spinning. They all had their bets that the sickly Rogers kid was finally going to bite the dust.

Bucky had come over every day after school, his bag filled with extra paper and notes he'd copied for Steve to help him catch up. Sat on the edge of the bed, like he’s doing now, with that grin. The one that said it was all good fun and they’d be outside to get an egg cream when this was over. Like Steve hadn't been pale and dying.

Which is obviously what must be happening now. He’s dying. He’s dying and this is a sad and pathetic hallucination or --

“I got you, the nurse will be here any sec. Just breathe, okay?” Bucky takes Steve's other hand, pressing another warm kiss to his knuckles and rubs firm circles on his back. Making it all beautifully, and yet horrifically, worse. “Can you do that for me?”

Steve passes out.

* * *

 

When Steve comes to again, eyes opening slowly, the same white ceiling welcomes him.

For a moment, he expects to hear the baseball game on an old wireless set, and for a woman to enter, say her scripted lines and lie to him. But that’s only for a moment.

Sitting up makes his head spin a little, but he’s alone. There’s a waiting chair on his left side with a jacket tossed across the seat, and about three empty Styrofoam cups of coffee on the bedside table. _Sam_ , Steve thinks again, _he got to me._

He has to have found them both, secured them into a hospital for treatment. Steve tells it to himself over and over, if only to stop the anxiety. It’s pooling open in the centre of his chest. Bucky was alive, he says again into the aether. He was alive. He’s alive. Steve puts his face in his hands.

Which means the...the dream, his brain settles on...was only that. Bucky at his side and looking as bright as he did when he was twenty-two, before the war was even a thought in their lives. Steve seriously thinks it’s about time he takes up that long-standing offer to see a therapist.

But. Steve tears his hands away and looks for his phone, his shield.  Anything. But his things must be behind the counter or taken back to Avengers Tower. Sam should have left his phone somewhere close, but Steve figures he’ll just ask for it when he gets back.

Steve zeroes in on a knapsack settled on the foot of the bed next to the chair and grabs it, hauling it onto his lap and eyeing the closed door.

There’s a change of clothes, an un-opened toothbrush package.  Steve frowns, takes out a leather wallet. He opens it and his own face stares up at him.

Steve stares at it in bewilderment, face pinched. There's a photo of him sitting in the gap of Bucky’s legs on a porch. Bucky wearing bright blue sunglasses and Steve holding a baseball cap with crazy hat hair. They’re both grinning. Only, it _can’t_ be him. This never happened. It’s an impossibility, in every sense of the word. They’re sitting too close to be out in public, too intimate.

The only time they’d had time to spend together before the war, Steve looked nothing like he does in the photo. Their clothes don’t belong to that time, but to the era he woke up in. It's too well done to be a fake; no one could get the lines of Bucky’s face that perfect. He doesn’t know anything about this. Hasn’t lived it or even felt like that since childhood. The photo is clearly modern and taken from some type of Polaroid camera.

Steve’s frown deepens as he finds credit cards under his name, a health insurance card, and pulls out a drivers licence. His name and face is all there but the rest is wrong:

 **ID: 018 100 879**  
ROGERS  
STEVEN GRANT  
45 EAST 9 TH STREET  
NEW YORK N.Y. 10003

**SEX: M  HEIGHT: 6'2"  WEIGHT: 220  EYES: BLU**

**DOB: 07-04-81**

An inhaler falls with a light thump on his lap and Steve feels his face pinch together even more once he sees who it’s prescribed to: Steven Grant Rogers.

“What, the fu—?“

The door opens. Steve doesn’t bother to hide that he was snooping, or do anything other than look up.

“Yeah…yeah, I promise…” Bucky says into a phone, back to him with a small coffee in one hand as he shuts the door with his shoulder. He turns, a look of pure relief spreading across his face. “I’m gonna have to call you back. Yeah, he is. Bye, you too, bye.” He hangs up, walking over and smiling.

“You, pal, owe me a motherfucking pacemaker,” Bucky starts and sets his cup down amongst the others. He puts a hand on Steve’s forehead, where it had started to collect some sweat.  “You’d think I knew what I was getting myself into when we were kids. Asshole,” he says fondly and steals another swift kiss, and Steve kisses back like its second-nature. He almost regrets it until he sees the happiness on Bucky’s face. 

Steve’s pretty sure he’s dreaming. It would explain a lot. He’s had a lot of ones like this before.

Bucky takes a seat on the chair and points to the license in Steve's hand. “Are you looking for your phone or something? Because that thing has moved on. Sayonara.”

When Steve does absolutely nothing but stare, eyes blank and body rigid, Bucky’s eyebrows furrow and he shakes his head, still smiling. “Why do you keep staring at me like that, babe? You look like you’ve – “

“Bucky,” Steve finally croaks out, dropping the inhaler on the mattress. He wants to reach out, touch him, and Bucky seems to understand, because he gives Steve his hand and squeezes. Steve looks down.

“Buck,” he tries again, mind soupy, and endless wires firing each and every way trying to make sense of everything all at once. It’s making his eyes hurt _._   He’s twenty six and ninety-five.  He’s running, breaking out in a mad dash like a deer on the run in the middle of Times Square. “Buck, what the hell is going on?”

The smile wavers on Bucky’s face. “What do you mean?” He looks like he’s afraid of the answer.

Steve looks him in the eye, waiting for the ball to drop. _Am I dead? What is this? The last time I saw you, you looked half dead. And that **thing**_ \-- “Are you okay?”

Bucky looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “ _Am I okay_? Did you seriously just ask me that?”

But Steve’s not listening, barrelling on. “Where are we? What – _what_ ,” he emphasizes again, squeezing Bucky's left hand, like if he touches it enough the metal will shake back into existence. “How did you get here? Where is Sam? Is he okay?”

“Okay, okay, Steve,” Bucky says, getting up but still holding Steve’s hands. Not like he could easily get out of the grip if he wanted to. Steve’s holding him so tight their knuckles are going white. Bucky reseats himself on the bed so they’re back at eye-level. “One at a time. You’re kind of scaring the shit out of me all over again.”

“Scaring _you_?” Steve says loudly and Bucky blinks, taken aback.

“Uh, yeah, pal. You fell off Nat’s roof trying to fix the satellite connection and nearly got yourself fried," he takes a breath, "I saw you fall. You’ve been in here for two days. And then you fainted on me only an hour ago.” His mouth does that twist when he’s getting fired up. “Yeah, I think I’m entitled to be a little freaked out.”

Steve’s ears are ringing. Natasha? He must have said it out-loud because Bucky makes a face at him. “Yeah?”

Steve looks into his eyes, blue on blue, waiting for sign that tells him that this is an illusion, another mission. An elision of truth hidden here.

Something sad blooms in Bucky’s eyes. He exhales and his brown curls flutter a little. “Okay. We’re in Morristown Medical Center. I got here with you in the ambulance. And, Steve, Stevie, look at me? Can you look at me please?” he begs, and Steve lets go of his hand, chest rising and falling faster the more Bucky speaks. Bucky cups the side of Steve’s face, light as air. “I don’t know a Sam.”

It feels like getting a wrecking ball to the side of his head. And, considering he still remembers getting pummelled by Bucky with a metal arm to that exact spot, he’s sure he’s not exaggerating. His expression must show the same.

“Steve,” Bucky says – his voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “I think we need to call in the doctors.”

That’s when Steve notices a glare coming from their joined hands. Two silver bands, identical, on both their fingers. How had he missed this?

“That,” Steve starts, “that doesn’t make any sense.” His voice sounds hollow, even to his own ears.

Bucky’s voice is soft. “What doesn’t?”

* * *

 

“Do you remember your name?” the doctor asks, after flicking off the light pen he'd angled to Steve’s eye. Steve almost laughs. Bucky catches it anyway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looks even more worried, if that was possible.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what it is?” The doctor takes out a pen from his pocket and starts to take notes.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” and because he knows it’s coming, “born July 4th 19—“

The pause makes the doctor look up, waiting, and makes Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up. “1981,” Steve finishes.

The doctor and Bucky release a sigh of relief.

“Do you recognize this man?” He points to Bucky, whose shoulders hitch up, waiting.

“Sure, that’s Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes.” He makes sure to say it with confidence and the smile he earns is warm.

* * *

 

And then, things get tricky.

* * *

 

Steve can’t answer anything other than the basics of who he is, who Bucky is in relation to him, and how he got there. The latter two of which, to be honest, were both things Bucky told him already.

When it gets down to the topics he should know, like: i) _Where do you work? ii) How long have you two been married? iii) What college did you attend? iv) What’s your earliest and last memory?_ All Steve really wants to say is:

 _i)_ _I used to work for SHIELD until I found out I’d actually been working for the enemy the whole time, so I’m technically not employed._

 _ii)_ _We’re not. He’s my best-friend, but we’ve never –_

 _iii)_ _I didn’t go. I was too poor for college._

 _iv)_ _1923\. Church with my mother and being really cold in the pews. Bucky. Bucky’s face, barely alive._

In reality, he says “I don’t know” to them all, fixing his gaze to the ground after question two; seeing the look of sheer devastation on Bucky’s face. Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the pained sound that came with it.

“Last question, Mr. Rogers. How long have you known your husband?”

“All my life.” It comes out before he could hold it back, reconfigure it, but he finds he’s glad he didn’t when he dares to look at Bucky and finds a proud smile on his pained face. Blue eyes red rimmed and tired.

* * *

The tests are about as helpful as Steve had expected.

The doctors trade looks of bewilderment upon reviewing his brain scan. They call it a focal traumatic brain injury caused by the fall. Steve says nothing when they explain it to Bucky, whose face has taken on a stony expression. A shadow, a trace, of the soldier that exists in the other world.

 _The real one_ , Steve thinks firmly.

“The Broca’s Area isn’t damaged, which typically happens in these cases, but he’s lucky his speech is still intact.” The doctor points to the scan. Bucky’s mouth twists.

“So what about his amnesia? It’s not.” Bucky pauses, swallows. “It’ll come back, right?”

The doctor hesitates, like the sheer desperation Bucky is trying so hard to hide is something he’s dealt with a lot. “In most cases, amnesia is temporary, and there are methods to help in aiding with his retrograde amnesia,” he starts. “His injury is mild, so I wouldn’t expect anything long term. But again,” he unclips the photo, “this is still speculation.”

Bucky waits until the doctor exits to give them privacy, and turns back to where Steve sits, showing him his best smile. It’s watery. “Hear that, kid? You’re gonna be alright. We can go home.”

The combination of the word _home_ and a smiling Bucky has always been able to release tension from his chest. Confusion from his mind. But this time...it doesn’t.

* * *

 

Steve outright refuses to be taken to Bucky’s car in a wheelchair when a nurse wheels it into the room. But the look Bucky gives him is enough to wither steel, and he lets Bucky push him into it and out the hospital doors. He thinks if he just rolls with the motions, he’s bound to wake up sooner rather than later.

“Buck,” Steve starts, staring at the car they’re approaching, “why do you have a Lincoln Navigator?” It’s shiny. He can see his reflection in the black paint.

“Like hell I do. It’s Natasha’s. She let me borrow it so I could take you home. No way in hell I’d use your damn fucking Harley.” He opens the passenger door. “Matter of fact, I’m shredding that thing as soon as I get to work.”

Steve only has to look at him hesitantly for Bucky to get what he's asking, and he ducks his head. “I'm a mechanic. I love it. You hate it.” He says it like it’s a common joke between them.

“Sounds like us,” Steve says, letting Bucky help him into the seat, even though he’s fine.

Bucky grins, lips curling. “Damn straight.”

* * *

 

The apartment they share is nothing like the shack they shared before the war.

From the outside, the building doesn’t look like much. But once Bucky opens the door, Steve’s jaw slackens. To put it simply, it makes Steve’s apartment in Dupont Circle look like shit.

Bucky’s hesitant on giving Steve a full tour of their apartment. “I don’t wanna overwhelm you. You just got back,” he says, with a crease between his eyebrows. A part of Steve wants to tell him he’s not a child and to quit with the mother hen act. It makes his skin itch. Bucky never treated Steve like he was weak, except when Steve came home bloodied or was sick in bed. Then that went out the window.

Instead, Steve insists. “Tell me.”

So Bucky does, holding his hand and pointing specific things out with the other.

  1.               They have two bedrooms. (“Well, it came with two bedrooms, but it’s mainly your studio and there’s a pull out bed so I can bother you while you work. That’s my favourite part.") It’s a large space, painted white, with long windows that let in natural light. There's broad desk with a laptop and assorted papers on it. Lived in. It’s hard to pinpoint what he does for a living just by looking at it.
  2.              The living room is modern and simple. Deep blue furniture and a glass coffee table. No television, even though there’s a space that clearly shows there used to be one. (“We never really use it, and the cable bill was costing too much. It was only ever good for like, the Super Bowl, but we go to Nat’s for that now. Or a bar.”)
  3.             There’s a dining room. A goddamn dining room. (“It looks like no one goes there because no one goes there.”)
  4.             The kitchen is immaculate. The island has a bowl of fruits nestled on it and two stools are set adjacent. There are colourful magnets stuck to the fridge, mostly animals and letters. Another photo of them is on the door. Steve doesn’t think he’ll get used to seeing himself in photos he was never actually in. It’s his face, but it’s not… _him_. Everything about the face staring back at him, in photo after photo, is wrong. The happiness and love shines in each one. He gives credit to his imagination – it’s not real, but it’s damn close to what life with Bucky could have been if they were born much later and had a chance. If Bucky loved him the way he did. Bucky’s taking the picture, arm extended, with the other over Steve’s shoulder. Their faces are pressed together; Bucky’s wearing a flat cap like the one he used to wear. His head’s tilted towards Steve with a closed smile, curled at the ends. Steve, on the other hand, has a dazed but happy look on his face. Steve squints at it. He thinks he looks a little tipsy in it, eyes red. (“You were high as a kite. New Years,” Bucky says with a glint in his eye.)  
  5.              There’s a grocery calendar with check-marks and a note with a slanted hand: _Dearest Bucky, please stop leaving half empty cans of Diet Coke in the fridge. It takes up space and you never finish them._
  6.             There are two bathrooms. One down the hall from the studio and one in their bedroom. The bed sheets on the king bed are unmade and the curtains are drawn. There’s art work on the walls that Steve knows was done by his own hand, even though he knows he didn’t create them. Not really. Not _here_.
  7.            A large mirrored dresser has framed photos. Steve feels his throat catch, seeing a photo of his mother in colour for the first time. She looks healthy and happy, reading a book and smiling. The others are of the two of them. They’re much younger, pre-pubescent, and Bucky has Steve in a soft headlock. Steve looks like he’s trying to hide his face while Bucky laughs, mouth open. There are two more. Bucky and Steve both dressed in suits and Bucky’s hair combed is back. Steve’s holding a diploma, leaning on him, a bouquet of flowers cradled in his elbow. The last is the largest. They’re in suits again, but they’re outside, sitting. Steve has his feet up on the bench, leaning against Bucky with his eyes closed, but obviously awake from the grin on his face. Bucky has his arm across the back of the bench bracketing Steve with a lazy smile to the camera. A bottle of champagne is on Steve’s lap. (“Is this from…?” Bucky nods, a sad smile on his face. “Yeah. We have more formal ones, but this…” he nods again, “yeah.”)



 

* * *

 

“Sorry,” Bucky says, rubbing a hand down his face. It’s then that Steve can see every new line of stress. His stubble is dark and scratches against his fingers as his palm moves down and then back up through his hair. “I’m gonna shower. Just, sit? Or something. Anything that involves zero movement. I’ll only take a minute," he says, and closes the bathroom door behind him.

The minute the shower starts running, Steve’s on his feet. He rummages through the room fast because, knowing Bucky, he damn well means it. Steve checks the obvious places first, and then the not so obvious.

No guns, no signs of surveillance or hidden knives, no stealth gear. Nothing. Bucky had mentioned that Steve's phone was broken, so he digs out Bucky’s instead. The contacts are sparse, straight forward and no one is under any code names. There are a few names he doesn’t know, but he breathes once he sees Natasha’s name, along with Clint and Tony. _Who else is here?_ He thinks desperately. He scrolls down and his heart sinks. No Sam.

The last call his phone made was to Natasha, but the time corresponds to when Steve was supposedly knocked out and in the hospital. The others are mainly to and from Steve and Stark. His texts are the same. The most recent is from an unidentified number, marked as unread:

1+ 020 203 4391  
_message me back or i’ll have black ops to your place so fast your bloody head will spin barnes_

“What?” Steve mutters, and his thumb hovers over the call button. The area-code is European, specifically London. He’s in the middle of weighing the pros and cons of calling the number when the shower shuts off. Four minutes. Steve puts the phone back and tries to collect his breathing.

* * *

 

Steve can’t stop looking.

He never thought he’d ever get this again. Sharing a place, a life, with Bucky like they always had. Thought he saw it walk away on the night before Bucky shipped to London, later to plummet into the icy rivers and snow. Lost between his fingertips.

Bucky places a large plate of sandwiches on the table. “Eat.” It’s not a question, or even remotely a suggestion. Steve does, suddenly ravenous.

The unknown number is still an itch in his mind that he can't satisfy. He has to ask. He needs to know everything about this world so he can figure out how to get out of it. How he got here in the first place. The dream theory is getting thinner by the second, and he’s still hasn’t entirely moved on from the hallucination or the ‘I’m dead’ theory. But—

He swallows. “I have a lot of questions,” he starts, and sets down his sandwich. Bucky looks straight into his eyes like he’d been preparing himself. He inhales deeply and waits. Steve figures he better start with the small stuff. “What do I do for work?”

“You’re a fourth grade teacher,” Bucky says. “Yeah, who woulda thought? Steve Rogers, spreading wisdom to the youth of tomorrow!”

Steve can’t help but laugh, and it looks like it brings Bucky a certain joy to see it.

“Anything else?” Bucky asks after a while, the question Steve's sure they’re both fearing still unsaid.

Steve says it, preparing himself. “How long have we been together?”

Like he knew it was coming, Bucky’s face crumples. He releases a breath like a gut punch. “Since we were twenty-five. We moved here shortly after that, about a year. Married for five.”

Steve nods and can’t help himself, placing a hand on top of where Bucky’s lie. “So you’re a mechanic?” He tries for casual, hoping to soothe. Steve doesn’t recall Bucky ever mentioning an interest in it when they were kids. He remembers Bucky always working at whoever was hiring, just to get by, and reading H.P. Lovercraft on his breaks. Learning new dance steps.

Bucky does a funny thing with his head. “Well…not technically. It’s kind of classified. My boss is a little…eccentric.”

Steve trains his face to stay calm, but everything in his brain is flashing warning signs. He mentally makes a note to stick a pin to that piece of information so he can revisit it later. _What the hell can be so classified that Bucky can’t tell his own husband?_ Maybe this is a cover after all, and Bucky’s doing a terrifically, horrifically great job in faking everything.

“Classified?” he asks, voice even. Bucky shrugs like it can’t be helped.

“Yeah, I had to sign a fuck load of papers. I’m nine-hundred percent sure if I spill anything I’ll get black bagged faster than you can say Serbia. But you visit when you can. Everyone loves you there,” he winks, “and you like to see me in my Stark Industries uniform.”

So, he works for Tony. Is SHIELD still a thing? Steve doesn’t dare ask in case it is, which would only alarm Bucky more than he already is. So that’s Bucky’s true employer. A part of his gut twists, making him queasy. SHIELD and HYDRA. Two sides of the same coin, in any version of reality.

“You work for Tony?” he asks, hoping he plays the shocked and impressed tone well enough to sell it.

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up. “You remember my boss but not our wedding?” he says jokingly, but his tone is a bit off. Steve squeezes his hand tighter. “But yeah, you’re right. I’m sure he’s got this house bugged. Which if he does, joke's on him.”

Wedding. The word sounds false and unreal, even with the evidence on both their fingers. He’s suddenly curious. “Tell me about our wedding,” Steve asks quietly and, not for the last time, looks down at the ring. Suddenly desperate to know everything about that day. To relive it through Bucky’s eyes. He was always a smooth talker, a great story-teller.

“It was on May 10th, 2009 and it’d been raining pretty much the entire day. Which, we weren’t even surprised about because it’s us. Our luck has always kinda been shot, especially when we plan things.” Bucky shrugs with one shoulder. “Anyway, it was small. And I mean very small, what with us being orphans like we are – “ He stops, looks stricken, and snaps his head back to Steve. “Jesus, fuck, did you know about that? _Fuck_.”

Steve smiles. “Yeah, Buck. I remember. Go on.” He nudges Bucky's foot under the table.

Bucky sighs. “Shit. Okay, good. Um, right. There were about twenty guests. You wanted to keep it small, which I honestly don’t know how we pulled off. I guess Peggy’s a lot scarier than her freaky black suit entourage --”

Steve cuts in, throat closing up. “Peggy?”

“Yeah, babe, you remember her?” Bucky asks, an encouraging smile on his lips.

Steve nods; how can he ever forget Peggy? Firecracker Peggy Carter, with a wicked right and left hook. His best girl.

“Is she…?” he trails, trying to find the right word that won’t make Bucky send him straight back to the hospital for another MRI. “…well?”

Bucky nods slowly and a little suspiciously. “She’s in England for a job, but yeah, she’s fine.”

The number. London area code. The text. Peggy. It’s from Peggy. “Is anyone taking care of her?”

Bucky just makes a face. “You _sure_ you remember her? She’s our age. I’m sure she can take care of herself.”

Steve releases a breath he hadn't been aware he was consciously holding. “You’re right.”

“You still want me to go on?” Bucky sounds hesitant.

Steve nods. “Please.”

So Bucky tells him.

* * *

 

“We did it pretty traditionally, even though I kept telling you we weren’t brides and we wouldn’t be cursed if I saw you before the wedding. Hell, I’ve seen you in suits more times than I can count, but you wouldn’t hear any of it. Anyway, it was at two in the afternoon and held in an outdoor garden. The Garrison in New York. I know right? But it was pouring like hell. Full on Day After Tomorrow. So I was ready to just run to City Hall with you over my damn shoulder if that’s what it took. But I get this call from you, and all you said was – and I’ll never fucking forget it, Steve. You said, ‘ _I’m goddamn marrying you, Bucky Barnes, in the pouring rain if I have to, and not you or God or anyone else is gonna stop me’.”_ He laughs. “Stubborn punk, as usual. But hey,” he shrugs, “you had a point.

“And, all of a sudden, when I’m driving up to the Garrison, the rain stops. It all just _stops_ , Stevie, and the sun starts coming up real slow. And then you were standing there, waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it. Everything. The weather, my luck. You. Your hair all flat and wet while I’m all dry. But you didn’t care. Kept smiling at me like –“ Bucky shakes his head, smiling “ – but I was lookin’ at you like that too. It was beautiful.”

He looks Steve in the eye, and lifts a hand to wipe a thumb over Steve’s cheek. He hadn't even realized he'd been crying. “You were beautiful," Bucky says. "Soaking wet and starting to sneeze a little bit, and I loved you even more. And you said you … “ He pauses, like he’s not sure if he should end the sentence there and leave it. But he doesn’t. “You loved me too.”

His smile’s shaky, watery. Voice full of swelling emotion, “I’m so sorry, Steve,” Bucky whispers. “This never should’ve happened to you. I...I hate myself for this. It was my idea to go to her house. I should’ve never let you go up there –“

“Bucky,” Steve says once, sternly and Bucky flicks wet eyes up at him, teary and so, so blue. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He’s fortunate in this moment, to be able to say the words he’s felt since forever. Since he took his first breath in both his lives; coming into existence and out of the ice. “I love you,” and again, “it’s not your fault.”

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t want to sleep.

It could still be a dream. One he knows will be hell to wake from because it’s perfect. Plucked straight out of all his deepest wishes and wants and made vivid. He’s in a coma somewhere in Eastern Europe, and Sam is freaking out, waiting for him to wake up. He really should. Should start wanting to. But –

He turns his head to a sleeping Bucky, warm and next to him, right arm thrown over Steve's middle.  Bucky, whose breathing has evened out, chest rising and falling deeply. There’s no purpling under Bucky's eyes or a stump of an arm stolen from him. His left hand twitches in sleep, untouched and untrained for murder and war. He’s here; alive. He knows Steve. Knows Steve down to his core, even if he thinks Steve's got holes in him now.

* * *

 

“Wait,” Steve asks for probably the seventh time, staring out the passenger window. “Who lives here again?”

If Bucky’s annoyed for having to repeat himself, he doesn’t show it. But he has a smug smile on his face and in his eyes when he looks at Steve through the reflection from the rear-view mirror. “I know, I was just as surprised when she told me. So were you, actually. Fuckin’ Jersey.” He pretends to shudder.  

He pulls to a perfect stop behind a black Camaro. The front door to the two story house is open, a dog running out and barking happily as a toddler chases after it. Strawberry blonde hair.

Bucky doesn’t seem fazed by it – _why the hell would he be?_ – and follows Steve out the car as he approaches the girl. She can't be any older than six, wearing a black leotard and white tights. The dog jumps on Bucky, standing on its hind legs and trying to get at his face. Steve watches as Bucky dodges its mouth, but smiling through the cringe when it gets his chin. “Aw, gross Lucky, quit it, play with Lana, go –“

“Steve!” The little girl shouts, but either she has a cold or she can’t pronounce the ‘v’ yet, because it comes out as ‘Steeb’, as she barrels into his legs, gripping onto his knee.

Steve’s faced down Nazis, aliens, robots and megalomaniac murderers. He’s gotten his ass handed to him more times than he can count by bullies twice his size, and has battled probably every illness under the sun. But now, he’s never been so afraid in his life. Looking down at the sweet, impossibly tiny girl who grins up at him.  His body entirely goes stiff when it clicks.

“I pick her up from dance, do her hair, and suddenly I’m chopped liver,” comes a familiar drawl and Steve looks up just as Bucky swoops in to set Lana on his hip.

“I mean, it’s not like I’m her dad or anything. Right, baby girl?” Clint says, stepping out of the house in a brown flannel and, oh my god, flip flops.

Lana ignores him, happily babbling to herself, and Bucky grins. It sends a pang to Steve’s chest to see it, even though it’s not directed at him. It doesn’t matter. It’s the wide, cheeky, smart-mouthed grin that had made all the girls on their block and beyond forget the low-brow things he got away with on the regular. Smiling and winking at dames in the pews during Mass. Hiding a collection of jobs behind Steve’s back because winter was around the corner and that meant the awakening every illness Steve had all at once. Steve had always wanted to strangle him, but found he never could, because Bucky would bat his eyelashes like an idiot and grin. Chasing the anger away every time.

“Nothin’ sudden about it. Everyone is chopped liver next to Steve, ain’t that right, Lana?” Bucky asks her and she just turns, attention diverted at the newcomer heading across the grass. Her small hands reach and make fists at the air, struggling to get out of Bucky’s grip.

Clint rolls his eyes and walks over to Steve. “I think you meant next to Natasha,” and, “hey man, how’re you feeling?”

Steve isn’t paying attention; he's fixated on Natasha, who has her hair longer than he’s ever seen it. Impeccably perfect and wavy. She’s simply dressed in a white shirt under a black tank-top dress that hits her knees. She’s in flats and very, very pregnant.

She’s staring at Steve with a strange expression as she takes her daughter from Bucky. For such a warp in reality, the look she gives him is readable only because he’s seen it before. When she'd sat on Sam’s bed and towelled off her hair; quiet, contemplative and sad. It takes a moment to realize they’re all looking at him and that Clint had asked him a question.

“You guys live in Jersey?” is what comes out of his mouth, and the pause before Bucky throws his head back and laughs is enough to break whatever tension there was.

“Well, excuse me for having a kid,” Clint says, defensive.

“Aw, don’t blame Lana because you live in Jersey,” Bucky teases and it’s a testament to this friendship that Steve has no memory or recollection of – _because they’re not his to begin with_ – that Clint just gives him an obscene gesture behind Natasha’s back so Lana wouldn’t see. He slaps a hand on Steve’s shoulder and grips tight before nudging his head towards the Lincoln. “If there’s a scratch, you’re a motherffff—henning dead man,” and leads him towards the car. The yellow dog follows Clint, and Bucky throws a supportive smile behind his shoulder at Steve, letting Clint drag him away.

“So,” Natasha says finally, daughter playing with the tips of her hair. “We visited you the first night at the hospital. You looked pretty awful.” She looks different. Gentler, maybe. A Natasha who wasn’t a trained assassin working for the KGB, but instead, living in the suburbs with a dog and a kid. Steve can only imagine her reaction when he tells her this when he wakes up. If he does.

“Uh,” Steve starts, scratching the side of his head, “yeah, I heard it was bad.” Her eyebrow quirks up. “There are still some things I don’t know about yet. It’s…” _non-existent, not real, none of this is_ “...fuzzy.”

“Steve,” she says and takes a step, “I’m so sorry about this. I understand if you want space from this place, from me.” She holds up a hand when Steve tries to speak over her. “I told James that it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring you here.”

Steve shakes his head. “No, I insisted. They said that going to familiar places might be able to help. And if I had to stay cooped up in that apartment with Bucky making sad eyes at me, I don’t think I could make it,” he ends with a shrug.

He'd planned it all out, while Bucky was getting the car. To find a flaw in the system, one needed to poke at it at the right places. Avoid drawing too many curious or worried eyes and attention so he can get to the bottom of whatever is going on. Play the role. Act the part of the loving husband with a full-time job who suffered an accident that explains his weird behaviour and amnesia. If he could do that, then maybe…maybe he could work on finding a way back.

Back to a world where Sam is in his life and on his side. Find where Bucky is – _the real Bucky_   – who needs him.

His acting seems to work, because Natasha smiles brightly, teeth and all, and takes his hand. “I’m glad you’re going to be okay.”

“So they say,” he says, trying at his own and hoping it doesn’t look too fake. It’s his Captain America one. The one he hates the most. “But I’m married to Bucky. I mean, ‘okay’ is sorta off the table.”

Natasha shakes her head, laughing, and leads him into the house. “Are you sure you two are married?”

* * *

 

“Pizza? Again?” Bucky says, as Clint carries two boxes into the kitchen and sets them down. Natasha has her feet up on the chair beside her, a cushion there for support, as Lana sits in a booster seat, her dinner of macaroni and cheese already devoured.

“Are you seriously complaining about pizza?” Clint asks, incredulous.

“I gotta go with Clint.” Steve reaches for the meat slice and slides it on a plate, licking off excess grease from his finger. Bucky’s eyes flick at the thumb in his mouth, a familiar heat Steve's seen before, but always pointed at dames. Never him.  

“Betrayed by my own husband,” Bucky laments, and Steve gets a swooping sensation in his belly. He swallows heavily behind a bite, hopes he’s hiding it.

“So,” Clint says, talking around the mess of food in his mouth. Natasha seems unfazed, just hands him a napkin without taking her eyes off her own food. “What, exactly, did they even tell you? From what I heard, it all seemed like doctor-speak for ‘I don’t know anything’.”

“Clint,” Natasha starts, a low warning in her tone.

“I’m just saying. I got the side of my head bashed in on a hike three years ago. I didn’t even recognize Nat when I woke up and she was standing over me. Not until a few hours later, doped up on pain-killers.”

“That’s completely different,” Bucky says, voice sounding strange. He sets his half eaten slice down, like he suddenly just lost his appetite. “You weren’t in a coma for two days and you didn’t fall from a two story height.”

“It’s not permanent,” Steve steps in, diffusing the tension that’s building. He half wants to lay his head on the table, or under a layer of sand because, of course, Clint has to be as blunt as he actually is. “I know enough.”

“Like?” Clint asks.

“That you’re still an asshole, for one. Sorry Lana,” he adds but she’s nodding off.

Bucky cracks a smile and offers his palm up under the table for a low-five. Clint laughs and gets up to lift her softly from her seat. She falls across his shoulder and he heads out of the room, calling over his shoulder: “Beers after this, guys!”

“I’d apologize for him, but I’ve sworn off making apologizes for people, especially idiots,” Natasha says and gets up, kissing them both on the cheek before excusing herself to sleep. “Pregnant women need double the amount, not that I’m complaining.”

When she leaves, Bucky’s smiling at him lopsidedly. “She actually misses her job like crazy,” he says and lifts a hand to pat down Steve's hair – the tuft that never stays flat on the right side of his head. Steve leans into it, an out-of-body experience. Like this body remembers this touch and wants more of it. Misses the lack of touch they’ve shared in the past few days; searching for that missing link.

* * *

 

Bucky says he’s putting a cap on only having three beers as they settle on the front porch at night. Clint rolls his eyes, like he doesn’t believe it, and hands one to Steve.

On instinct, Steve starts to wave him off before reconsidering; remembering he hadn't undergone Project Rebirth here. From what he’s gathered so far, he’s gotten to this shape purely by hitting an appropriate puberty streak and working out. Not from a serum. None of this is real, he reminds himself again, like a broken record. It’s starting to annoy him. And maybe that means he can actually get drunk. Suddenly, he needs it. Practically steals the bottle from Clint’s hand.

 Bucky frowns. “I know they didn’t say you shouldn’t be drinking, but do you think that’s a good idea?”

And all Steve wants to say – scream, at this point – is that he hasn’t _forgotten_ anything. He’s just currently experiencing the most painful, lucid, vivid hallucination spurred on by god-knows-what. And also, _fuck you Barnes. You’re not the damn boss of me._

But Clint saves him. “Dude, I don’t think it works that way,” he says, peeling off the wet label from his own bottle.

“Oh, I forgot you have a PhD in this shit,” Bucky snaps.

Clint just looks at Steve, who has a third of the bottle done already and is feeling a warmth spread through him, one he hasn’t felt in years.

“Here.” Clint reaches for the photo albums he'd brought out earlier, and hands one to Steve. “Feel free to ask as much as you want. But if you wanna just look, there’s a few things that might trigger something.” And then he leans back and brings his bottle back to his lips.

Steve’s hand atop the front page might be trembling, but there’s no doubting the feeling of his heart lodged in his throat is one of foreboding. He can see Bucky watching him intently from the bench across him.

The album mostly compiled of photos of Natasha in various settings around the world, and of Lucky, their dog. “Where’s Lana?” he asks, to take the edge off.

Clint’s eyes are closed. “Dude, those have a section of their own.”

He turns the page and there it is; Steve’s holding her and she’s tiny enough that she must have just been born. He looks younger, thinner maybe. Not as much muscle mass. He's looking at the camera with a spooked to all hell look in his eyes. There’s a near identical one, but with Bucky; his hair is longer and in a small messy bun. They both look like they'd just woken up, dressed in bed clothes under heavy jackets.

The page beside it has Bucky with an arm around Natasha in a city, way younger. He turns to show it to Bucky who frowns before smiling. “Oh yeah. That was in Amsterdam. 1999.”

“What were you doing there?” Steve asks, turning the book back to himself. Bucky and Nat are standing in front of Rijksmuseum. The photo was taken in the late evening; the lights in the building look warm. It’s stunning.

“You were there too, pal, I wouldn’t have left ya out.” He leans over and turns the page and there it is. Steve standing next to a fountain, smaller and thin, but not as short as he was back in his real childhood. He looks about four inches taller and, even though his back is facing the camera, he’s looking over his shoulder and squinting at the sun in his eyes. Mouth open around a sentence Steve has no memory of.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, smiling through a sigh and drinking the photo in. “That was a spontaneous trip after high-school graduation. We wanted to dodge college for a bit longer so we all just backpacked along Europe.” He rests an elbow on his knee, fingers pressed to the side of his face. “You actually took the other one. We were _supposed_ to ask someone to take it, but _someone_ was in his insecure braces phase,” he says, and laughs. The sound is beautiful.

Steve looks at him; has been looking at him non-stop since he woke up in a bleached room and in a flat hospital bed. Drinks Bucky in every chance he gets. This Bucky, who resembles the one in another lifetime in a dingy Brooklyn apartment, and yet, who never had the chance to live _this._

It hurts. Steve physically feels his heart clench in pain looking at Bucky every time he does, which has been a lot lately. He doesn’t think he can handle it anymore. He’s sinking; getting lost in everything he loves about Bucky all over again -- the small things no one else had been able to see but him. The way he looks at Steve, like they’re constantly sharing an inside joke the world isn’t in on. How bright blue his eyes are, and how he talks and laughs with his whole body. When he laughs really hard, he bends over and closes his eyes. His flirtatious and childish dirty sense of humor that had always contrasted Steve’s dry and almost dark sense of one.  Steve thinks he’d rather wake up now.

“And let me guess, you took this one?” Steve tries for a lighter tone, to change the subject and that look of pure adoration on Bucky’s voice. The words are tight, and yet Bucky does nothing to soothe it, casually shrugs.

“Takin’ photos of you is kind of my forte. I’m always lookin’ at you, kid,” he answers, and winks just as Clint groans.

There are more; carefree ones, and a full photo of the one Steve carries in his wallet. It looks like a joint Fourth of July and birthday party. Steve doesn’t miss the irony staring him in the face. Can’t seem to shake Captain America no matter where he exists. Lucky has a birthday hat on and, in the group photo, Bucky is sitting on Steve’s lap, and Steve and Natasha both have icing on their face in the recognizable line of a finger. Clint’s making bunny ears behind Natasha, who holds a sparkler.

It’s too much. He closes it and rubs at his eyes.

* * *

 

Bucky is more or less carrying Steve to their apartment.

“Six beers and you’re a lush. I’m embarrassed for you,” Bucky says and plants a loud kiss to his cheek, helping Steve to their bedroom.

Steve wiggles out of Bucky’s arms and takes two heavy steps before falling headfirst into the pillows. They’re cool to the touch. He can’t stifle the groan.

Bucky laughs softly and the bedroom light snaps on. Steve clenches his eyes shut and groans, burying his face into the pillow. “Buck…no.” He can hear Bucky approach, and mumbles a protest when Bucky rolls Steve over onto his back and then into a sitting position.

“You’re wiped, I know, but I gotta get you out of your clothes. It’ll just take a sec,” he says gently and starts to remove Steve’s shoes, and then his socks. And because he’s still Bucky, he wriggles two fingers on the flat of Steve’s foot.

Steve laughs, squirming. “Tickles,” he says and kicks out at Bucky, who smiles, catching him around the ankle.

“Last one, I promise.” He removes the other shoe, and then reaches for the bottom of Steve’s sweater. Steve raises his arms over his head and it comes off, leaving him in a worn shirt. “Okay, now the fun part. Lie down?”

The low tremor of his voice stirs something warm in Steve’s chest and stomach, but it’s slow and sludgy, almost far-away. Dream-like, from the amount of alcohol numbing his system. His everything.

But mostly his brain and mouth, because he goes with it and shuts his eyes. The sound that escapes his lips is borderline filthy. Bucky’s fingers stutter at his belt buckle and then hold.

The lights are still on. Steve could take a peek and see what Bucky looks like, but now, he feels soupy, lazy and hot. When Bucky’s hands don’t move, Steve swivels his hips, tongue too heavy to tell him to go on with it. He peeks an eye open, and Bucky’s staring at him, eyes wide and pupils dark.

Steve’s throat tightens up, parched at the sight of him. Suddenly he wants. Wants Bucky, and from the hungry look on Bucky’s face, he’s not alone. Steve’s mind barrels out of control after that, imagining all the ways he and Bucky would have sex in this world. When Steve had daydreamed about it back in the forties, even in the thirties if he’s being honest with himself, he'd pictured it as wild and encompassing. For once, loving the idea that Bucky was so much bigger than him. That he’d have to throw himself at Bucky, and Bucky could hold his weight easily.

He’s reaching down for Bucky before he knows it. “C’mere,” he says softly, and Bucky does. Steve wants to justify it by playing the part, not making Bucky suspicious by shutting him out of any intimacy. But he knows it’s a bol-faced lie when he's the one who kisses Bucky this time. Not the other way around, like the way it's been happening so far. Steve groans because Bucky does against his lips, making his mouth vibrate and tingle. The kiss is different compared to the others; a primal need as Bucky swings a leg over his hips and deepens it, pushing Steve deep into the pillows. And yeah, he’s more than sold that their sex life is completely filthy by the way Bucky’s hot tongue gets into his mouth so easily, a hand rubbing at the muscles on his side. Up and down. 

And then Bucky pulls away, leaving Steve’s mouth cold and wet. “Bucky?” It comes out weird, maybe a little slurred.

Bucky’s more than turned on. Steve can see the thick hard outline of Bucky's erection in his jeans but still, he doesn’t come back into Steve's arms. He smiles though, and kisses Steve's forehead. “You're drunk,” he says and goes back to undoing Steve’s jeans, where Steve’s own hard on is dying. “When you’re not smelling like a bar. Promise,” he adds.

“You’re a tease,” Steve accuses, but licks his lips anyway, chasing Bucky's taste. Bucky notices.

“I’m the tease, he says. _I’m the tease_. Lift your hips for me babe? Thanks,” he says, and gets them all the way off. Steve takes the chance to roll onto his side and watches through half-lidded eyes as Bucky quickly undresses himself.

“Like it when you call me that,” Steve mutters, mostly into the pillow.

Bucky turns around, curious, but with a smile on his face. Steve never thought he’d see it again, and he’s seen so much of it lately. He doesn’t know if he can survive never seeing it again.

Bucky leans in, every part of him teasing and sultry. He’s close enough that their noses bump and he nuzzles the side of Steve’s face. If he wasn’t so drunk, Steve thinks he might have reacted differently than he does now. Which is to surrender, limbs relaxing.

“Call you what?” Bucky's breath hot against his face.

“Baby...babe,” Steve explains and breathes in deep, closing his eyes. Bucky tilts Steve's head towards him by the chin and kisses him; a warm one pressed to Steve’s lips and he can feel Bucky's smile. He thinks lazily that he can get used to Bucky’s frequent kisses.

Bucky’s hand runs slowly through the side of Steve’s hair. “I love you. Do you know that?” he asks, voice barely over a whisper. Steve knows. Knows Bucky loves him, has known it all his life. But as a brother. Not this. The gesture he makes is a mixture of nodding and shaking his head.

“M’sorry Buck,” he says, half-delirious enough to loosen his tongue. “M’sorry I’m not him, m’so fuckin’ sorry.”

Bucky’s hand stays in his hair for a long time, before pulling away. The pillow feels wet.

* * *

 

_The HYDRA bunker is the same. Large, cold, and tinged in light: green and yellow light. It makes all the skin tones of the bodies strung up look inhuman, alien._

_His feet walk heavy. One step banging after another, achingly slow. You can’t run fast in dreams, he thinks in a panic. Not even when the devil is chasing you._

_The faces of the deceased are blurred, scrubbed off by an eraser. Un-named and left to perish. Clothing drab and grey. Except for one._

_He’s dressed in bold blues and reds and, unlike the thin bodies of the others, he’s a large mass shape. He’s hanging; limp, greying and cold, with his arms bound over his head. Not trying to scramble for purchase but lifeless, just as he is. He’s a part of them now. The dozens of rows upon rows of dead or dying corpses, life seeping out of him one blood bag at a time._

_Blond hair is matted and dried with caked blood, some on his ear. His blue eyes stare at nothing, eyelids flickering. A thick vein on the side of his neck pulsing fresh blood up into a bag._

_Blue-grey hands reach for the needle in his vulnerable neck, raise it high. Curls out a long grey tongue to taste it. Its eyes glow blue._

* * *

 

Steve wakes with a large gasp, gulping in air hungrily. Like he used to. He thrashes, throwing the sheets off, and the bottom sheet is soaked in sweat. Bucky isn’t beside him, but the spray of the shower tells Steve he’s close.

_In, 1, 2, 3, out, 1, 2 ,3…_

Steve _tries,_ but his chest won’t stop heaving. At this rate, he’ll be sick all over the floor. He clutches a hand to his chest, pressing down to anchor himself. But he closes his eyes and sees it again, stamped behind his eye sockets.

 _That’s where I am_ , he thinks. Even his thoughts sound out of breath. _I’m still there._ He holds his nape with both hands, ignoring the wetness there and stares at the mess of sheets between his legs. _That’s where Bucky is._

* * *

 

 

Steve is confident he’s not gonna wake up without a push.


	2. PART II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds out it is one to thing to find an out, but it is another to take that leap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize for the monthly delay. But hopefully, the last chapter will be completed sooner than this chapter took to be edited. All mistakes are mine, if any. 
> 
> Note: also, for this chapter please heed the tags. It's not a literal suicide but more of an Inception escape. If anything is an issue, please leave me a comment so I can adjust the tags.

## 

_I know you don't believe in fate but I've got to tell you_  
_that shaking your hand that first time felt like the end refrain of some grand cosmic blueprint._  
_I’m not trying to say we were always leading up to this_  
_(except i can’t shake the feeling that we were)_

_\-- Elisabeth Hewer._

* * *

 

Bucky goes to work the next morning. He makes a big breakfast as an apology, even though Steve tells him over and over that it isn’t necessary. “Although, maybe the coffee is,” he adds and earns a laugh from Bucky. The mug says **_Best Teacher Ever_** , and Steve knows without having to ask that Bucky made it himself. 

He’s pleasantly surprised when he sees that Bucky makes his eggs the way he’s always liked best, sunny side up. Some things stay consistent, even in a dream. But Bucky doesn’t sit and eat with him, only stuffs a piece of toast in his mouth and heads for the door. He’s dressed impeccably in a black suit, but with the buttons undone and no tie. 

He tries to leave with just a kiss. And Steve lets him at first, prolonging it by holding onto his hips right when Bucky goes to pull back. Bucky breathes out a laugh when Steve hold their unmoving mouths together longer than normal, until they both end up huffing and laughing against each other’s lips like kids. 

Bucky eventually wriggles out, eyes sparkling. “You done, ya sap?”

Steve’s eyes linger at the open space at Bucky’s throat, where his palm lies. The temptation is still there and only growing stronger. Pulsing alongside the hot drumming of Bucky’s blood Steve can feel against his fingers. Bucky quirks his head coyly, a teasing smile upturning his lips and it pokes and _pokes_ , at the tender resolve Steve swore to himself when he woke up this morning that he would keep up. That he would fight every instinct and want in his body to take a step back.

But here, now, his throat feels dry when he swallows the want back. It comes back in a rush; the back of his throat physically hurts, as though not kissing Bucky or touching him the way he wants is parching him. Steve blinks as if out of a daze and finds Bucky staring at him fondly, as alluring as ever. His blue eyes intoxicating as ever, like they always have been as far back as Steve can remember and Steve lets Bucky win. Lets _this_ win, and slowly moves closer into the orbit, taking Bucky’s inviting bottom lip into his own. Steve savours it, half wondering if what Bucky tastes like here is real and doesn’t let himself care about all how wrong this is for a few moments longer.

 

* * *

 

“You’re gonna make me late,” Bucky sighs later, thumping his head back to the door because Steve can’t find it within himself to stop kissing the soft and spare hairs he finds peaking out of the top of Bucky’s shirt. “Menace. You’re a fucking menace.” 

“How about now?” Steve says, and moves his mouth to Bucky’s. Kisses him slowly, opening up his mouth and getting at the leftover crumbs on the corners of Bucky’s mouth. He remembers how Bucky'd kissed him last night and tries to copy it, slipping his tongue in and twisting. “Better?”

Bucky opens his eyes slowly and blinks. “No. Not at all,” he says and, rough as anything, pulls Steve back. Swinging around so it’s Steve who's against the door. 

It takes Bucky’s phone buzzing to get them to breathlessly part. Bucky’s hair is now a mess, and they’re both more than a little hard. Bucky groans, “I hate you. Why do you always do this,” he complains to the sky, mouth red and swollen. 

“You’re fine, here, come here –  _I’m serious_ , nothing funny I promise, don’t look at me like that.” Steve laughs at Bucky’s suspicious face. But Bucky comes close anyway and lets Steve pat his hair back down. “Okay, you’re good.” He steps aside and barely holds back a snort when Bucky readjusts himself in his pants before he leaves with the soft snap of the door.  The noise charges Steve into action and he’s on the hunt.

Steve wastes no time searching the internet, but to no avail. He doesn’t even know what he’s searching for. The thing in his nightmare – the reality --  is out of the stuff that belongs in horror films and sci-fi movies, but after meeting Thor and fighting aliens, he’s willing to believe just about anything. 

Steve takes a breath and rubs at his eyes, missing Sam’s guidance more than ever. Misses Natasha’s comforting hand reassuring him.

 _But they’re not_ , he chides himself and tries again, typing into the search bar everything he can pick apart from the bunker. Any hope of a detail.  Grey skin. Blue glowing eyes. Blood – so much blood. Feeds off of human blood…

When he sees what’s at the top of the list, his breath hitches.  _Wanda’s Bookshop._  

He clicks the link to the website and it directs him to a webpage. Wanda Maximoff’s face is on the  _About The Owner_  link, smiling like he’s never seen her smile. The store biography says it carries first edition books from around the world, but not just any books. Books specializing in: _early anthropology, women’s rituals, world religions, global folklore and traditions, supernatural and the paranormal…_

Steve writes down the address, and bolts out the apartment door. 

 

* * *

 

 

The door opens with a chime, and with it comes the smell of incense and soft acoustic music playing in the background. It’s not busy, which he had expected, and Wanda is at the front desk, a cup of tea next to her. So far, everyone in the real world seems to be here in this one, too. Everyone, but Sam. 

She looks up when he walks in. “Good morning,” she says, her accent is softer than he remembers. 

“Hi,” he says, desperate to avoid small talk and get to the point. “I thought I could ask for some help finding a book.” Her eyebrow quirks up along with the corner of her mouth, as if to say: _well, you’ve found the right place._ Steve shakes his head, starting over. “It’s on…” he barely holds back a cringe, “the supernatural.”

“What kind?” she asks, interested, and straightens. 

 _I’d like to fucking know too,_ Steve thinks. “I’m not sure what it is, I, uh, saw it in a movie a long time ago and forgot the name," he lies. "But I can describe it to you?” 

“Tell me,” and nods her head in invitation to the stacks of books that tower further down the store. 

 

* * *

 

 

“From what you said, I’m thinking of something more in the Middle East region,” she says and points to a book too high for her. Steve side-steps around and reaches for it, noting the weight of it before handing it to her. 

It takes a while as she flips through the pages but when she turns the book around, she points at a picture on the page, Steve feels a chill clasp his gut. The picture isn’t in colour and is hand drawn, but he knows he’ll never forget that face. The name on the chapter header says “THE DJINN.” Its head is bald and has a long forked tongue on the page. Its skin looks to be covered in tattoos and brands.

“What is it?” he asks. His fingers twitch, wanting nothing more than to take the book from her. She hands it over to him, probably sensing it. She apparently doesn’t need it to describe the details. 

“It’s traced back to the Qur’an. Not to be confused with Jinn, which is the Islamic version of the devil. But they’re still all over the Qur’an. It’s a genie.” She frowns. “Kind of.”

Steve tears his gaze from the book. “A genie?” he repeats. 

“I say that because they grant wishes.” She says it like she’s told this story before to a sceptical audience. “They’ve got god-like powers. They can alter reality however they want. They take the greatest desire from a person and spin a reality around that desire. If you wish that your parent or spouse never died, for example, you would be living in a world where they never did. You get the idea. You don’t have to ask for it or say it, but they see it. They know it.” 

Steve can't swallow. Can't breathe. And wildly thinks he’s about to pass out again; everything falling into perfect, painful place.

He knows already what his own deepest desire was. After losing Bucky again and again since the war entered their lives, it would make sense for the Djinn to come after him; sensing that if he could wish for anything it would be to have Bucky back with him always. In a world where the horrors of war and what it did to them never existed. Where he and Steve could be together in every sense of the word. In ways that were so impossible back then. God, he probably _stunk_ of long suffering desires.

Here it is. Staring him right in the face with undeniable clarity – a universe where he and Bucky have another chance at life. He swallows, remembering what he saw; all those bodies hanging and the blood bags. Where he and Bucky are now. “Do they feed off blood?”

Wanda nods. “They’ve been feeding off people for centuries. That’s how they survive.”

“You say that like it’s real,” he says, testing her.

She smiles wide. “Anything is possible.”

“So,” he says, turning a page without reading it, and schools his voice not to tremble and his hands to shake. “Hypothetically speaking, how does someone get out of this? Is there even a way?” He doesn’t think he’ll survive hearing if there isn’t. If this is permanent. 

Wanda looks on, a growing suspicion in her wide eyes. “There’s always a way. For this case, religious scholars say the person trapped needs to be the one to get themselves out. Killing the Djinn doesn’t have an effect --”

“You can kill it?” Steve interrupts. She nods again slowly, a certain look on her face in response to the clipped tone of his voice.

“Silver blade dipped in lamb’s blood. It’s in the book.” Steve makes a note of that. Hell, it’s number one on his to do list when he gets out. 

If, he thinks again, pained.  _If._ “What do,” he stops before he says ‘I’, “they need to do?”

“Old wives tale,” she says, a glint in her eye. “You have to kill yourself.”

Steve’s heart bangs in his chest, throwing itself against his rib cage in so much dire panic it's irrational. The sudden lurch doesn’t compute; not at first. He’s never been afraid of death; had been awaiting it all of his life because of what the nuns and nurses told him. How he'd never seen past thirty if he was lucky. An invalid.

Giving his life for a cause never sat unwell for him.  It was always better, than to live a full life as someone who stood by. And against all knowledge and will, he's lived longer and survived death against unimaginable odds it should be ironic for a man like him. And so the wave of fear he feels doesn’t make sense...

Until it does.

It would mean leaving Bucky. Where he’s with the very man he’s wanted since he knew what wanting was. 

Only it’s nothing like it was back then and is everything that he wished that it was, young and deluded and recklessly in love and hopeful. The sheer idea of throwing it away should be insane but –

But Bucky. _Bucky_. Steve thinks, nauseated. The real Bucky, who is strung up along with him. Who is hallucinating right next to him in some damp abandoned basement needs Steve to snap out of it. To stop wasting the time they’ve never had enough of before. If there is any left. 

“You can imagine how many people choose _not_ to do it,” Wanda continues wistfully. Her voice pulling him out of thoughts like cool waves. “The dream reality is so perfect, so believable and desired that it’s preferable to the harsh reality of the real world. And so they perish. Happily, I would imagine.”

Steve thinks of the girl -- tied up and half-dead with a ghost of a smile on her lips. He probably looks the same. He looks back at the book heavy in his hands.

“How much for the book?”

“You can have it,” she says. “It seems like it means a great deal to you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve doesn’t even wait until he’s back at the apartment to open the book again. The crisp wind carries him along the busy streets and threatens to flip the pages as he’s trying to read. He’s not thinking, not really, about coordination until his shoulder collides into someone on accident.

Steve catches the book before it has a chance to fall, and turns to apologize for his carelessness all in the same movement, when he sees who he bumped into.

It’s _Sam._

Steve viscerally feels his heart give a vicious pang against his rib cage by the force of adrenaline. It comes in with an onslaught of heightened emotions: shock and relief, so much relief and Steve only stops from taking the one step towards him when he notices the look in Sam’s eye. He looks…alarmed, and when Sam looks Steve right in the eye, his brown eyes register nothing but minor concern as he frowns at Steve, who is rooted to the spot in horror under the realization settling on him.

“You okay man?” Sam asks, polite and closed off. 

Steve clutches the book as an anchor to his chest. He doesn’t know him. They’re not friends here. There’s nothing to connect them here and it’s clear as ever now that he allows himself to see it. It never seemed like a possibility that Sam would exist here and not know him. It seemed easier, to believe Bucky’s words and swallow the fact that Sam wasn’t someone who existed in this trap. That would have been a blessing, Steve knows this now as Sam starts to look a little uncomfortable. It’s starting to make Steve feel sick, physically sick to his stomach and he wonders darkly if it’s his curse to be forgotten by the people he cherishes in a loop for all time.

Steve bites back saying his name but nods, wanting nothing more than to escape. “Yeah, I’m sorry,” Steve says. The reminder is a cinder block to the side of the head of a firm reminder of where he truly is. The fabrication of everything.

Sam follows his gesture, but slowly, like he doesn’t believe that Steve’s okay at all. “Right,” he says, and turns away, blending back into the crowd.

Steve watches as he turns to look over his shoulder, catching Steve staring and gives him a weird look before turning again. And then he’s gone. 

Steve aches for Sam then, as he walks away, more than he ever thought he could have. 

 

* * *

 

 

The only reason why he has the book sitting there, wide and in the open is because Bucky is still at work. He sees the irony; from desperate to get back and submerge himself in its pages to now looking at it with contempt. It lays pushed away from him, a stand-off at the kitchen island in eerie silence.

His hesitation lasts barely five minutes. 

Now, time is figurative. Torturous and sludgy. Steve doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the open page in front of him.

Twenty days. Twenty days until everything he’s been experiencing will be permanent and he will never awaken back in the real world. Steve doesn’t have to check the calendar or look at his watch to know. It’s already been three days, going on four by the way the sun has painted the sky rosy since he woke up in the hospital. The pages illustrate stories of how people who’ve been under _have_  woken, and had woken all under that allotted time frame. It depicts the difficulties of trying to restore the victims to full health due to the lack of blood left in their system. It tells how many had died anyway.

Again, the image of Bucky back in the real world comes to mind and Steve flinches, his hands balling into tight fists.  Bucky slack and weak and damp in Steve’s hands in the HYDRA bunker. And, even though Steve finds some small, fleeting solace within himself when he remembers that Bucky was the only one alive in the bunker, it lasts only a moment. Alive for how long? Steve grips at his hair and pulls, bracing his weight on his elbows. There’s no way of knowing how long Bucky's been there. Steve has already lost _days_ , and so has Bucky. He could have been on his last few.

Steve feels himself go cold. He could have found Bucky on his  _last_. Steve could already be too late to save him.

Steve scrubs at his eyes hard and breathes out, trying to calm down although it’s forceful and fake.  _Breathe. Compartmentalize._

The urge to do something instant and reckless comes to mind. Like grabbing the knife off from the display shelf and turning it on himself to follow the rules. He's wired enough and desperate enough to take the chance if it means saving Bucky. And now would be the best time, wouldn't it? He doesn’t trust himself to face Bucky – d _ream, fake, illusion, a **lie** ,_ Bucky – again.  

Steve takes a hold of the handle of the chef's knife and stares at it and it stares back. Cajoling him, daring him and mocking him all at once. He considers it; Bucky’s not home. He could get out. Fast and quick,  without having to see his face until he’s real again. Bucky’s beautiful face that was always shining when he turned towards Steve on the good days. They had so many of those.

The hesitance doesn't make sense. Steve places the knife back in the holder. He's been telling himself every waking moment, that who he sees, who he touches is  _not_ Bucky. Yes, he can feel him; Bucky's warm skin under his hands and he can hear the sound of his breathing  along his lips when they kiss. But it’s not the Bucky he grew up with through the Depression and during the war. 

It’s not the Bucky who waded in after him day in and day out because it was second nature. Who cursed Steve's name time and again, but went in anyway to have his back. Because if Steve was going down swinging, so would he. 

It’s not the same Bucky who left the security of his family to shack up with Steve, even though rent was tight, because Steve needed him. Even when he was too stubborn to admit it to his face at the worst of times. Sick and angry – always so damn angry at the world, but never with Bucky.

And it’s not the same Bucky who died for him because he believed in him. Who plummeted into ice and water and had his blood soak into the white snow while Steve howled from high above, clinging to a cold steel rail despite wanting no more than to die with him too. Bucky, who'd looked at him in the crashing fires and smoke of a hellicarrier and _knew_ Steve. Against everything that tried to strip Steve away from him again and again. He knew me, Steve thinks now, miserable and hopeful all at once --

It’s that, Steve thinks, that matters. And he’s wasting time playing house with an imagination. No matter what face it wears. Steve turns away from the tease of the kitchen table and stares back at his hands.  _You’re going to have to at some point,_  he thinks without hope. 

Steve almost gets a crick in his neck from the way his head snaps to attention from the quick rap on the door. It’s barely half past four in the afternoon. There’s no way Bucky would be home. Nor would it make sense for him to knock to enter his own place. It’s almost welcoming in its familiarity when Steve stands alert and at the ready. He makes his way as soundlessly as he can towards the door, his fingers aching for some piece of protection. His shield.

Steve ignores the idea to check the peep hole, half expecting the door to be kicked in on pure instinct and unlocks the door. He opens it marginally –

Peggy Carter stands on the other side of the threshold. 

Her hair is windswept; parted in the middle and straightened, falling past her shoulders. She wears it different than he remembers. She sizes him up, brown eyes scanning him before settling on his face. Her hands are on her hips and Steve just stares, unconsciously letting the door fall open further. His arm falls limp to his side.

“For all the panic I endured, you sure look just as good as I remember,” she says, casual, and then a smile makes its way on her lips. Just a little shy. “Are you going to let me in?”

Steve thinks, distantly, that it makes sense to see her here. There’s so much of himself that _wouldn’t_ be without Peggy Carter, and his world has always been that much more endurable, brighter, once she stepped into it. But it still hurts just to look at her.  He feels something break somewhere inside. Steve doesn’t think he can take another moment of this any more. Still, he’s moving with the pure instinct clawing in his stomach, wanting her close, and grabs her arm to pull her inside and into his waiting arms. She comes, sneaking her arms under his armpits and onto his shoulders and resting her head on his chest. She clutches him just as tight as he holds her, almost reverently. Steve feels his knees quake. She’s just as lovely as she always has been. Always will be.

Young and bright, like she was before, when he first met her.

“Steve?” she says against his chest when he holds on. He lets her step back, but she still holds him. Her hands slide down from his shoulders to his forearms. She studies him and tilts her head. “What?”

 _I never thought I’d ever see you like this again,_ he thinks, sounding hysterical to his own ears. So sad. _I thought I was late. I’m always so goddamn late._

And _this_ is another tragedy to add to the others. She knows him  _here_ , but not  _him_. Not the real Steve, the one she believed in. She's not the Peggy  he owes everything in his life to. She has no memory of their true story together and what they lost. Maybe it’s for the best in this case; something in how she looks at him makes him feel like their story here is without heartache.

“I just missed you. I really missed your face,” he says, and he allows himself to shrug. Like it’s nothing. Like this is a thing that’s even possible to shrug off. “That’s all.” And then he offers up a smile. It doesn’t frighten or worry Peggy by the looks of it. For once, it feels real. Just looking at her centers him. It always has. 

“How’ve you been, Peg?”

 

* * *

 

She says she can’t stay long. That there’s a jet waiting for her that she needs to be on and she’s waiting a call, so he pours her a generous glass of rosé wine and hands it to her when he sits next to her on the living room couch.

“You really gave me quite a scare, Steve,” she says, She stares at the pink liquid without taking a sip. “I wanted to get to you as fast as I could, but I'm not immediate family. And, after they knew you were with James, it seemed foolish to them. I’m sorry, love.”

The ominous _‘them’_ makes it obvious to Steve who she works for. Steve really wishes people would stop apologizing over things that were never their fault to begin with. A distant part of him tells him he should take his own damn advice. The tone sounds a lot like Bucky. 

“You’re here now,” Steve reassures her.

Peggy takes a small sip of the wine, “It’s just difficult. Being away for long periods of time and being unable to leave…situations, at a moment’s notice.” Peggy says, forlorn. 

The way she speaks about work is reminiscent of how Bucky talks about work, only it’s much more obvious that Bucky’s security clearance is nowhere near the level Peggy’s is. Which seems to mean a lot. He swallows down the need to ask. 

Steve’s hand finds itself on the small of her back before he registers that it’s there. Instead of stiffening or moving away, Peggy leans into him. Whatever their history is here, Steve knows it’s intimate and strong, just like it is in the real world. With the limited hours and minutes he knows he has left here, Steve is glad to have this.

Steve opens his mouth around a sentence – something, anything – to tell her something truthful when her pager starts to ring and the atmosphere is severed.

It’s Peggy who recovers first; she was always stronger than him anyway. She controls the death of her smile into something merciful. The encouraging and comforting one that grows in exchange isn’t enough to console the ache Steve is beginning to feel.  He can viscerally feel the tether snap between them when she moves away and downs the remaining of her glass and, with one sweep through her hair, she’s back to professional. Steve leads her back inside and towards the door, awkwardly shifting on his feet as she gathers herself. Her movements are swift and perfect, and yet it’s her eyes that give her away.  How she casts them down to the floor, then scratches at the top of her head after shrugging on her coat.

“I actually have something for you.” Steve watches her as she pulls out a rectangular black phone from her coat pocket. Pristine and new. Steve takes it from her almost numbly. “Now you have no excuse to not stay in touch me with me,” she declares, and then exhales heavily. “Wherever I go.”

Her smile quivers a little before spreading wide, but closed. “No more falling, Steve.”

She’s in his arms again in an instant, Steve nearly dropping the phone to pull her into a bone crushing hug. He half thinks that he might be hurting her for how fiercely he holds her, but she answers back immediately. Hugs him back just as tightly. If she notices his odd behaviour, she doesn't remark on it.

Her phone now starts to ring. “Peg—“ 

_I don’t want you to go._

_You’re my best girl. I loved you. I still love you –_

“They can go fuck themselves,” she mumbles into his chest and they laugh, a little watery. 

Eventually, minutes, hours, another seventy years, Peggy steps back from him. She still grips his elbows. Her eyes seem puffy, but there are no tears or redness in her eyes. “Well, I’ll be sure to call you when I land.”

You won’t, he thinks.

“Wherever that is,” he says aloud, and her lips cant up. 

“Wherever I am. I’ll see you soon, Steve,” she says and barely has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. Steve wants to claim he doesn’t know why he does it, but he does. He tilts his head down and lets her lips press innocently to his own. Peggy allows the chaste kiss. When she ends it, her smile is grateful. 

Coming out of the ice, Steve couldn’t help but think about Peggy every other day. He'd known how much time had passed, and he'd known the images he had of her in his brain were fiction. 

It had been seventy years, and yet all he was able to picture was her back during the forties – how she looks standing before him now. He supposes he'd been hopeless back then; fixated still on that ancient and half concocted notion that he could have made a life with her after the war. Could’ve been happy with her. 

Steve had long settled his horse on the reality where his feelings for Bucky would go. The love of his life. Yet, someone he could never be with. Loving Bucky was a secret he was more than willing and ready to die for, if it meant keeping Bucky in his life forever. 

He'd been a coward back in those days; staring at her contact number and sepia toned photograph amongst the SHIELD files. Frightened to witness the truth of how long he'd been gone and having to witness the reality of it in the new lines on her skin that contrasted with the smoothness of his own. The idea of just showing up so far into her life when she had long made peace with losing him had seemed cruel and unfair. Like he was nothing more but a bad ghost of a memory, unwanted. Making peaceful moments bittersweet when she lost him and then remembered him in an insidious cycle.  Steve now wants nothing more than to kick himself into a bloody pulp for the delay. For how scared he'd been. She was still Peggy in every way that mattered – of course she would be -- still waiting for him, waiting for him. He was proud of her when he looked at the photographs on her mantle that proved she had lived a good and long life. But then all those feelings would be muddled when the shame settled in for not experiencing any of it with her. He had missed the beautiful experience of watching her grow old.  _God_.  He’s still so proud of her;

Steve can’t bear to watch her go. But he does. The door marks it with its loud snap in the silence of the apartment and Steve locks it behind her. He lets his forehead rest on the cool white surface and clenches his eyes tight. 

He takes in another shuddering breath, lets himself acknowledge that this will be the last time he will ever see her like that. Young and with a full life ahead of her. He’ll only see that again in his dreams – and well, isn’t this one already?

 _I’m going to spend every damn waking second I have with Peggy when I get back,_  he declares recklessly.  No longer caring about how much it will kill him when her mind wanders, even though it never stopped him before. He’s going to be there, all the way.  Until…

Until…

* * *

 

Steve hears the distant sound of the front door opening. He’s lying on the pull-out bed in his office and staring at the ceiling and the slowly diminishing light. He’d been counting the divots for longer than he can care to recall.

Bucky speaks up from the distance between them. “Okay, I guess ‘I’ll be home soon’ was an understatement, but for the record, I had a pretty good reason,” he says loudly, and then: “Steve, where are you?”

“Here,” Steve calls, but it’s not loud at all. Only heard because of the absolute silence their apartment has settled under ever since Peggy'd left. He doesn’t really sound like anything.

He hears the soft sounds of Bucky making his way up the stairs to the second level.  Then the door is pushed all the way open. The lights flick on and Steve looks at Bucky, his arm is braced on the door frame. When his eyes see Steve, his eyebrows crinkle together in question.

Steve shakes his head and fights the urge to childishly pull covers over his head. Succumb to the misery he’s been feeling for the past hour. “Rough day. That’s all,” he says softly.

It’s another lie. Another lie to get by and out of this place and it’s devastating when Steve flicks his eyes to Bucky, who is still at the doorway. Watches as the previous blissed-out dies a savage death. Like he can smell Steve’s lie.

Bucky breathes. “Steve –“

“Bucky,” Steve says, stern and stands. “That’s all. I – “ He openly hesitates on the ‘ _I promise’_ ; it sticks in his throat. “I need to shower,” he finishes, and moves past him. 

Bucky follows him into the bedroom and slams the door behind him. “Steve, what the hell is going on? What –  _hey_.” He reaches for Steve’s wrist. “ _Steve._ ”

Steve doesn’t twist out of the grip. Just lets Bucky turn him around and says nothing. Bucky's eyebrows are knitted together, his big blue eyes glassy. It’s astonishing, really, how quickly one can go from joy to confused despair – all because of the acts of one person.

Steve wants to pull away. Wants to fall to the floor in a ball and disappear for being the cause of it. 

He wants to cry – he’s on the knife’s edge of it, and has been for the past two and a half hours, and Bucky’s face – a painful dichotomy of aches and wants – isn’t helping.

He wants to grip Bucky and kiss this and everything else away. Wants to follow through and run. Get in that shower and just sit under its hot spray and drown. 

He licks his lips. “That’s all it is." 

His wrist is released – Bucky letting him go. He doesn’t let his gaze falter from Steve, but he does take one step back. It looks like a surrender. 

It’s not. “You think I don’t know,” he starts, voice chillingly calm, “you think I don’t see it but I do. I do, Steve. Something has been up with you ever since –“ Bucky breaks off, mouth twisting. Like the idea to say the words – what Bucky thinks happened – to him is too much to vocalize. “You don’t talk to me the same. Not anymore.” He comes close, raising a hand and Steve flinches.

Bucky notices it. “What’s going on?” he pleads. “Don’t you fucking lie to me, Rogers. Don’t you dare. 'Cause I’ll know. I promise you.”

Steve sags, tired. So bone-achingly tired he feels sick with it.  _He’s fake, he’s not real,_  Steve chants in his head. But then, he’s seen that face before. Has seen it when Bucky'd looked at him on the hellicarrier as it had gone down. When Steve had taken a weak, staggering step forward and called out Bucky's name on bloodied and bruised lips. 

“I …”

“You what? _Talk_.” Bucky snaps, blue eyes shining, face flushed. Steve's distantly impressed at the Djinn’s job in trying to make him believe this. That this Bucky is real and alive and hurting, all because of him. He hates this. He hates this so –

“I can’t do this.” The words fumble out of his mouth; the wiring from his brain to his lips cross-wired and, as much as the words are true, the slapped look on Bucky’s face makes his chest hurt. He’s seen it on soldiers right before they’d dropped on the battlefield.

 _Breathe, Rogers_. Tries to gain strength to witness this and not die under the pressure. Bucky’s crying.  _Just get through this and you can get him back. You can save him. He’s not re—_

“What the fuck do you mean? Do what?” Bucky presses and then his breathing does an awful wheezing thing. It takes Steve back to his childhood, only that sound should never come out of Bucky. “Us?  _God_  – Steve – what –  _what are you sayin_ g?” he looks like he’s about to fall over. 

Steve’s been pulled tight ever since he woke up in this – _whatever_ this is – and he feels himself snap back like a band. He’s suddenly angry with himself that he’s getting so torn down, beat up and ripped to pieces over something that should be so easy to walk away from. The lack of a point to this whole damn conversation is only making it worse under the reality that he’s dying somewhere in a dark room. And so is Bucky; who stands in front of him and doesn’t all at the same time. 

Bucky’s mouth twists into something awful. His lips don’t quiver but he licks them and swallows, bracing himself. Steve feels himself do the same, despite the overwhelming chant in his head that pounds behind his eyelids that tells him not to give in, to stay on his feet, back straight.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me?” Bucky begs and gasps, his chest heaving beneath his suit.  He scrubs at his face with his wrist. “It’s like, oh god,” he says, agonized.

It’s still Bucky’s face. His voice. Steve’s heard this timbre before, when Steve had cried silently on his shoulder after his mother was buried. Bucky'd held him under his arm and told him it would be okay. That Bucky wasn’t going anywhere. That Steve would have to move the earth for that to even be a concept in his mind and even then, he would never leave.  His voice had quivered then, but just barely. Trying his best to be the brave one out of two of them while gripping Steve’s thin shoulder tighter. 

“It’s like I don’t even know who you are anymore. Is this hurting you as much as it’s hurting me?” Bucky lets out, pained. Steve winces, but still looks him in the eyes. Bucky just looks back, as if waiting Steve to reassure him that he’s wrong. 

He doesn’t. Any hope of a constructed sentence withers into dust in his throat, and Bucky takes a breath and backs away. Turns his back to Steve and runs a hand through his hair. It takes everything in Steve's core to not reach out and touch him. He looks so _real_. 

“I’ll be here when you come out,” Bucky says hollowly, and starts to remove his suit jacket, giving Steve the time to get into the bathroom. He does. It feels like running away, but he needs the distance.

Steve shuts the door softly between them – a physical barrier between them that's felt more than seen. He turns the shower faucets on with no intent to actually get in anymore. Instead, he settles for sitting with his back to the bathroom door and lets himself breathe through the thickening air. 

 

* * *

 

 

Still dressed, Steve steps out of the bathroom, the hot steam unfurling behind him. Bucky's asleep, curled under the heap of blankets on the bed like a cocoon.  Like he's seeking the comfort and warmth Steve can’t give him. The bedside lamp is on, spilling across the room in a gleam of sunset orange so bright it’s difficult to not notice the obvious; Bucky looks like he’d been crying.

Steve diverts his eyes to the mirror and, like a cold hand grasping him around the throat and squeezing, the photos that adorn the table – the ones that had made his heart swell when he'd first seen them – now do something else. The happiness and shine to their faces no longer dare him to go through with it; now, they _remind_ him of what he'd had. 

He had this. He'd spent a beautiful childhood with Bucky back in Brooklyn that he would never trade for anything sweeter than the bloody, messy perfection they'd shared. When they would play softball on the streets and try not to get run over, using curbs as bases. Perpetually caked in mud, with dirty knees and skinned elbows. Sitting under the shade of an awning and sharing sodas – a tradition after Mass until they'd both stopped going. Bucky waiting for him, with messy brown curls growing out and overdue for a haircut. Always waiting for him. 

He'd spent unforgettable years with Bucky when they transitioned from boys to young men. Leaving high school and going out dancing even though Steve had hated it; but found he couldn’t say no when Bucky'd pouted or made faces until Steve gave in. Countless birthdays, and he can’t remember one where Bucky wasn’t there – even when they barely had enough cents to rub together for a half-assed cake. His life has always been marked as before Bucky and after him, when he thought he’d always mourn Bucky until it was his turn to go.

The thoughts are unbearable before they become soothing. He has a life with Bucky, regardless of the meaning or context of what it entails, and he would never trade that past or their future away for anything. He’s not _leaving_ Bucky. He’s going _back_. 

 

* * *

 

 

The once abandoned chef’s knife feels oddly light in his hands. Casual and unassuming even when Steve raises it, points the glinting tip of it directly over his heart. He’s done the calculations and has plunged bigger knives into the same spot of other men in Europe. It’ll be messy if it mattered.

Steve takes a breath, proud to hear that it comes true, reassured and steady. He pulls his elbows back and pushes in, deep into his heart with all his force.  


	3. The Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case of confusion: I changed the title, because the prior title ("True Elision") was used as a sort of catharsis for me from a fic that I loved years ago, and yet was left incomplete since 2008. And since this is my first WIP, I thought naming such a beloved dead fic of my past would motivate me to finish this on time. However, it didn't quite do the trick, and I apologize. But this is not abandoned. 
> 
> Opening quote is from the song "Sleeping At Last" by Saturn. And yes, this fic title is taken from this beautiful and fitting song.

_"I couldn’t help but ask_   
_For you to say it all again._   
_I tried to write it down_   
_But I could never find a pen._   
_I’d give anything to hear_   
_You say it one more time,_   
_That the universe was made_   
_Just to be seen by my eyes."_

 

* * *

 

The beeping wakes him up before the pain does. It’s not a pain he’s felt for a while; a familiar ache in his bones, that for a second, makes him think foggily that he’s a hundred pounds lighter and a hundred percent sicker. Stuck in bed like that one terrible spring in ’35 that scared his ma and Bucky something fierce –

_Bucky._

Steve’s eyes open and he sits up, or tries to, before his whole body sags back into the bed the second he does. It’s like an actual gravitational force that throws him back into the pillows from the sagging weakness he feels. An I.V. tugs sharply in the inside of his elbow. One quick scan tells him, again, that he’s in a recovery room. And he’s alone.  

The sense of déjà vu makes the monitor beside him make a sharp sound from the spike in his chest. It’s all too soon; the freshness of this, that he can’t control the climbing panic he’s feeling. Whoever comes through that door will tell him everything. If he’s made it out. If it worked. Steve raises a hand to his heart where he remembers embedding a blade deep into just a blink ago.  _Always a blink ago_. 

He presses down tentatively over his heart; it doesn’t hurt but everything else does. He presses down harder, tempted to tug down the collar of his hospital gown to get a look when the door to his room opens slowly. The creak of the door makes his breath catch in his throat –

Sam’s back is to him as he enters quietly and shuts the door behind himself with a swift lock. His shoulders are hunched. Every line of his body screams exhaustion; it’s all over his face when he turns around. Sam freezes, sneakers skidding as he halts with his mouth open, his wide eyes on Steve. Raw and sudden relief rises and bursts somewhere in Steve’s core.

Sam is over to him in four long strides, he hesitates with his arms out to embrace him, worry in his brown eyes, but Steve doesn’t care. He forces himself to sit up with great effort and pulls Sam in by his shirt. Sam gives the hug back as strong as he gets it and slaps Steve’s back and then rubbing it affectionately. Steve is delirious enough he’s close to tears. Thankful. Sam pulls back and clutches his shoulder. “You are some kind of sonuvabitch.”

Steve laughs, half-gone on the relief. _He’s back_. Sam knows him. But – 

His face must do something, because Sam nods and takes a seat at his side. “He’s alive. We got him.” 

It’s a relief; earth shattering by it’s force, but it’s also not enough. Steve wants to see him with his own eyes. He has to. If Bucky is still even here. If he hasn’t up and disappeared already like Steve knows is inevitable.  

“Now hold on,” Sam starts before Steve can start to pry, reading the expression on Steve’s face and shutting him down. Steve glares. Sam doesn’t seem fazed.  

“Before I give you the answers to the question I know you wanna ask, here are some answers to others that are just as important,” Sam raises a finger. “One. You’re going to be fine and the quicker you listen to the people here the quicker you can get out,” he raises another, “two we’re in New York –“

“New York.” Steve repeats, blank.

“Stark’s building. We didn’t think it would be wise to lock you and Barnes in a civilian hospital with random doctors poking at you two. And I personally didn’t want to deal with your rampage if you woke up knowing I let that happen to him. No one outside us knows Barnes is alive. Figured we should keep it that way. Fury let us borrow his guy from D.C.”

Steve frowns, unable to argue against that. He remembers that man, through the fog and disorientation he had felt. Holding a bleeding Natasha in one arm and feeling dizzy with the fact that Bucky was alive. Alive, young and didn’t know him. “So how is this better? How do we know HYDRA doesn’t have moles here?”

“Considering we have only a handful of doctors all under Natasha and Stark’s personal selection, I think we’re doing fine so far. Plus, I’m pretty sure Barnes did his own recon.”

Steve stares.  

“He blends in. He’s freakishly good at it, not that I’m surprised. None of the workers here recognize him,” he finishes.

After a moment, Sam lowers his head, wrings his hands. It’s uncharacteristic of him. All teasing humor fading into something sober and Steve’s eyebrows knit together, curious.

“Sam?”

“Steve, what _the hell happened back there_?” Sam asks. “You were completely catatonic. They said you lost over two litres of blood. What got the jump on you?”

Steve suddenly feels ice cold. An entire bucket doused over him. His arms prickling with rising gooseflesh and thinks of the Djinn that attacked him there. For a maddening moment, he thinks he’s back in the ice, trapped inside the Valkyrie. Steve looks away, shame and honest to God fear sitting oily in his gut. Stubbornly, he tries to fight it. Tries to get his mouth to work and tell Sam; say anything about what happened despite knowing how insane it’ll sound.

But his mouth and tongue slog like glue. Sam notices -- of course he does -- and Steve shakes his head, the plead obvious there. _I can’t talk about it_. _Not yet. Maybe not ever._

He thinks about the countless others he found tied up there and has to ask, “what happened to the others?”

Sam’s face darkens, distressed. He speaks to the floor, “nothing we could do. You and Barnes were the only ones alive in there. We had to detonate the base. It…” he pauses and exhales loudly, like shaking out a memory. “…it wasn’t pretty Steve. If it wasn’t for Natasha and Stark…”

“ _Don’t_. Sam,” Steve warns. “You did your best. You saved us. I won’t hear it okay? I won’t hear a single damn word. Captain’s fucking orders.”

There’s a beat before Sam snorts. It’s still hollow, but there’s a hint of a grateful smile on his face. “God I missed you. You dumbass piece of shit.”

Steve shrugs dramatically for effect, smiling a little and then lets the moment settle, before he rustles under the sheets.  “So he’s here? He’s… doing okay?”

Sam’s face does a strange thing and considers. “He shows himself when he wants to,” Sam answers, purposefully not answering the second question. “I’m pretty sure he’s been checking up on you here and there. He doesn’t talk to us if he can avoid it.”

“Us?”

Sam smiles small, getting to his feet. “You need to rest. They pumped you with so much shit it would knock out a dinosaur. I don’t know how you’re not drooling all over yourself.”

Steve would laugh if it was under any other circumstance. But he makes a face instead and doesn’t care at how petulant it sounds to say he’s not tired. That he doesn’t need rest. “I’ve been sleeping for _days_ Sam. Hell, I’ve been sleeping for longer than _I’ve been alive_.”

Sam only sighs, “Seriously man. I have authorization to press this button,” and points to a button attached to the machine beside Steve. “don’t make me use it. Ten minutes. We’ll all still be here when you get some rest.”

Steve feels his jaw tighten and tick, staring up at Sam who slaps him lightly on the shoulder again and shakes it fondly.

“Glad your back man.”

Steve can feel the heady weight behind those words, because he feels the same. Grateful to have Sam back and know him. Steve thinks, sadly, as Sam leaves that it’s some sick joke that his fate in the schematics of the universe seems to demand that he'll never have all the people he loves the most in the world exist all in one realm of existence. It's either losing Peggy and having Bucky. Losing Bucky and having Peggy. Loss and heartache is second nature, so consistent to him he braces it now with a smile.

He thinks before he drifts off into inevitable sleep, delirious; that maybe it’s time he settles with the fact that the only person who will remember who he was before the ice, before Captain America, might always just be himself.

 

* * *

 

What wakes Steve up is his bed. It’s shaking softly in a constant predictable rhythm. Steve turns to his right and Natasha sits beside him in one of the visitor’s chairs. Her legs rest on his bed, crossed at the ankle and her foot jiggles as she eats chocolate pudding from a plastic spoon. Her big green eyes are fixed on a muted drama displayed on the television screen with subtitles.

She knows he’s awake and looking at her – the side of her mouth pulls upwards around the spoon in her mouth. Natasha pulls it out with a smack and stops shaking her foot.  She quirks her head at him, asking the question she doesn’t vocalize. _You okay?_

Steve isn’t in the mood for her games. But he can’t deny that he’s glad to see her – the real her – who shares barely a shimmer of the woman he witnessed walk across a suburban yard to hold her daughter. He thinks he sees cracks of it, a millisecond of a glimmer in moments.

“Hey so, how did you survive the thirties being O negative?” she asks nonchalantly, scrapping the last morsels at the bottom. Her tone is all teasing; a tone he’s come to know well. She nudges his leg with her toe when he takes too long to answer.

“Barely,” he says dryly. Then, “wait, how do you know that?”

“Barnes stole your medical files,” she says, as though she didn’t just drop a building on Steve. “You lost too much. He wanted the doctors to give you his.”

“And did they?” His voice rising, hard as steel. Natasha’s look is answer enough. Steve really has to, _needs to_ break something.

“You don’t tell the Winter Soldier no,” Natasha says without remorse over the way Steve’s face changes at the name. “That’s who he spent the last decades as Steve. Stop pretending and stop worrying.” she says. “He’s impressive. I saw him flirt with the nurses to get them. He could have gotten that information in a messier way. He didn’t.” She ends it like – that’s that and let’s move on. Be happy he didn’t snap any one’s neck to get them.  

Rationally, he knows he’s only been conscious for a few hours. But the part of him that has always clung to Bucky, who was always only a side glance away, wants to know why he isn’t here. Why Bucky hasn’t come to see him if he’s still in the facility. If anything, the information that he _is_ around makes it worse. _He’s avoiding me_ , he thinks, sounding pitiful and desperate inside his own head.

Natasha reads him like a book. “He’ll show himself. I don’t think he’ll want to leave without saying -- ” she trails off and something apologetic flickers in her green eyes. He wishes she’d just say it. Wishes everyone would just quit tip-toeing around him.

That this is just another ticking time bomb and before he knows it, Bucky will disappear into the wind all over again. Or maybe he’s already gone; had checked in on Steve while he slept to know he was back and then fled to parts unknown. Or he’s going to, while Steve can barely use his legs to chase after him. Steve looks down, his hands curling into the sheets.

“I’m sorry Steve,” Natasha says. Her low voice is saturated with regret and it’s enough to make Steve turn to her, questioning. “I sent you two in half-prepared.”

“I’ve gone in with worse.”

“Against _people_ Steve _. Humans_. Not whatever that was.”

“You know, I’m gettin’ real sick of people apologizing to me all the damn time.”

“I’m sure he could say the same thing to you.” She leans forward, putting her empty cup down on the table. The light of the room catches on the glint of her necklace. Steve never noticed it in detail before. The tiny arrow hanging delicately along the dip of her throat.

In a moment, Steve weighs the idea of telling her what he saw. He thought originally, that the Djinn made him see what he wanted. Regardless of it being true in the real world. But catching the necklace on Natasha, a small, barely noticeable sentiment speaks volumes now. It’s obvious and so like Natasha. Hiding something so important in plain sight.

“I have a question,” he starts and Natasha turns her full attention at him. “But you don’t have to answer it.”

He waits, until it catches up to her and watches as Natasha releases a disbelieving laugh and stares at him in awe. Steve grins at her, listening to her raspy laugh until she pushes at his thigh. “What is it?”

“Nothin’.”

Natasha studies him intensely, her smile lapsing slowly and losing its shine before she pushes up to her feet.

"Where are you going?” He asks.

 To find your lunch,” she nods to the empty pudding. “I ate it while you slept,” and shrugs at Steve’s expression. “Tony’s people should have something.” She puts on her leather coat and ties the belt. It’s tight, but he knows she has about half a dozen weapons on her person right now.

Steve wants to ask her how long he’s supposed to be kept here, useless, so he can tell her to cut it down, but she’s out the door by the spin of her booted heel and closes the door behind her. Steve studies the ceiling and raises a hand to his face. The I.V. needle is piercing into his skin and he hates it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me if you want: deimoslunaa.tumblr.com


	4. PART III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What did you see?” Bucky asks. His tone is direct and to the point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I chose to post this and extend the last chapter (which will be part 5 as the final) because it was getting too long to be just one chapter so I cut it in half. I'm so sorry about the delay. School is killing me. This is un-beta'd. All mistakes are mine.

PART IV

_“H_ _e reaches over and_ _he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your  heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.”_

– Richard Siken.

 

 

It’s been seven minutes. Steve has moved himself to the edge of the bed, his feet touching the cold floor. They still feel heavy; like he’s carrying lead instead of limbs but his arms are lightening up. Despite how their combined healing cells are working together to speed along his healing, Steve hates to know that he has Bucky’s blood in his veins – that again, Bucky is throwing himself on the line, on the fucking table, for Steve. Bleeding for him again.

His hearing has been keeping track of the movements outside his room. On average, only two people circulate the halls in nurses’ shoes. He connects the heavy boots to Sam and the heel clicks to Natasha, which he has been waiting to pick up ever since she left. So when the door opens softly with no prior noticeable foot falls, Steve already knows who it is. His heart lodges in his throat.

Bucky steps into the room soundlessly and closes the door just as so. His hair is covered beneath a ball cap and he’s dressed in shades of black; a dark bomber jacket with a grey Henley underneath and black denim. Both his hands are gloved in leather, holding a brown paper bag.

It’s as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. Steve swallows and finds that it’s a struggle to. Bucky stares for a moment, blue eyes flicking all over Steve’s body before he moves towards the chair. But instead of sitting down where it is, he drags it a distance away from where Steve is perched and takes a seat.

For all the time a part, after so much time spent on chasing dead leads and scorched dead ends to finally _, finally_ , sharing a private space with Bucky… Steve finds that he is at a loss of words to say. What can he say? Where does he begin to start?

He doesn’t ask about how he’s doing. Steve knows better than most how much he hates that question. He’s always hated that question and he’s well aware of how that’ll only push Bucky away. If there’s one thing he knows as his universal truth is that Bucky can take care of himself. He always had; with his younger sisters and when they struggled to make ends meet living in Red Hook.

And looking at him now is proof of that. Steve can see that he’s surviving well on his own. He looks healthier than the last time Steve saw him in the HYDRA base. It’s Steve, like always, that hasn’t been straight without him.

So.

"That for me?” Steve motions to the bag in Bucky’s lap now. He’s stalling. He’s not above it.

Bucky blinks down at it, as though he had forgotten he was holding it and tosses it to Steve. It lands, hot, on his lap. The smell of roast meat filling his nose and his stomach aches.

Bucky takes off his hat and his hair curls right under his ears. He talks to a space beside Steve. “You’ve got fancy friends from all over looking after you now. Doesn’t mean I trust them.”

Steve takes that at face value. Can see it in his head; Bucky cornering Natasha on her way with meal in stow back to him. And Bucky convincing her to let him bring it instead. Probably suspicious about the contents of it and Natasha understanding. Obliging.

His appetite nose dives. Bucky won’t look at him. He can’t take it anymore. 

Steve can’t count on both hands how many times he and Bucky fought in the past. It never got bad. Bucky threatened hitting Steve more than he ever did it – never did it – but sometimes, Steve wished that he would. Because the silences they had when they got into it; words cutting sharp and dirty were worse than any punch to the jaw could ever feel.

They would eat in separate corners of their apartment. It was difficult, to avoid one another in their cramped apartment and not speak. Ignoring each other only made the tension thicker. Steve choked on it. Days would pass where the most they would get out were stubborn, short remarks.

_(“You done with your plate?”)_

_(“Turn down the radio will ya? I’m hittin’ the sack.”)_

But always before heading to bed, they would mutter a goodnight before disappearing into their rooms. As if just to reassure the other, no matter how bad it was, that this would pass. Just like every other fight always did and they would find each other again. Bucky knocking on Steve’s door with an apology and promise for a night out. Steve having dinner made for Bucky when he got home late as a peace offering.

They fought about nothing and everything just like they could talk and laugh and joke about nothing and everything. But at least then, when they were at each other’s throats, hollering enough for the neighbours to bang on their thin walls. Even when things got so bad Steve wanted to _kill him_ ; wondered how they could get this far, fighting so often and not kill each other, they still looked each other dead in the eye.

_(“Say it again Barnes! If you’re gonna be a tough guy, say it to my damn face!” Steve had shouted once, late at night and pushed Bucky. It wouldn’t have done much, but Bucky was drunk and it sent him back two steps.)_

It was never _this_. This was becoming unbearable. Steve swallows thickly and despite how hurt he is… he’s also so tired.

“Will you look at me?” He says. His voice is strangely soft. It doesn’t even sound like him. “Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t listen, not immediately. But something in the gesture of his shoulders tense up and tighten. His jaw flexes but his eyes are still on the end of Steve’s bed. It’s painful, because Steve is only two steps away from him, seated at the edge of the hospital bed and it’s an obvious choice on Bucky’s part to not look at him. He knows he can feel it.

He’s not above it. He’ll do it.  “Please,” he begs.

Bucky looks him dead in the eye. It’s nothing like the look he gave him before, back on the causeway or even remotely anything like when they fought on the hellicarrier. It’s a look of someone Steve doesn’t know and yet is wearing the face of his dead best friend.

“What did you see?” Bucky asks. His tone is direct and to the point.

It doesn’t come off like a question and Steve doesn’t have to ask to know exactly what he’s referring to. Steve doesn’t know how to shape the words. Or if there are even any words that exist, that can describe what he saw and what it all meant to him.

How a life with Bucky could have looked like; one out of the millions upon millions of versions. Bucky stares at him, waiting patiently. And so Steve shifts in his seat and tells him everything.

Bucky’s face doesn’t change when he speaks; the words flooding out and unstoppable. That they were together, in love and married. There’s no blip of surprise or disgust on his face, not that that means anything. There’s no shift even when Steve gets to the part where he stabbed himself in the heart to get out of there to get back to him. The real him.

It’s the look HYDRA trained him with and Steve hates it. _Hates_ that he can still remember what a blinding smile or confident smirk looked like on Bucky’s face. Because now, it seems as though it will never appear ever again.

Steve hates that he can’t help wondering if this will be it. That Bucky’s smiles in his memories will be a dead memory from now on. Only meant to haunt him in sleep and in life. 

Bucky continues to look at him, a misty look ghosting in his eyes that make him seem so much older than he looks. It’s starting to unnerve Steve, but then he asks, softly, “can I?”

It’s out of nowhere. Steve’s stupefied by it momentarily, blindsided by the question. _Did he not hear a word I said?_ Steve thinks. He doesn’t register that he’s already nodding, unsure of what Bucky is even asking for, when Bucky takes the two steps it takes to sit down next to him. Close enough that their shoulders are touching and pulls Steve into an embrace. It’s not crushing by any means; it’s tentative and gentle, by the way Bucky lightly holds Steve to him. Steve only lets that linger for a moment before he clutches him. He breathes out against the space between his jaw and shoulder, relieved and tightens his hold.

Something unspeakable shatters all at once in the centre of Steve’s chest; spreading like live-wire and imbedding itself into all the corners of his being, he’ll never be able to pick them out. Steve feels as though he’ll burst from it at any second. It feels like tragedy. It feels like happiness – a good way to die. His rabbit heart is beating wildly in his chest, to suddenly have Bucky so close to him. Bucky has to feel it too.

Bucky’s buries his face into the side of Steve’s neck, inhales shakily and Steve holds him and holds him until they’re a shade of alright that stops them for falling a part.

For a moment, it’s a relief that Bucky can feel the obvious truth radiating out from Steve. He must know what it means, without Steve having to explicitly say the words. Has to know that Steve is still hopelessly and sadly in love with him after all these years.

But then, it’s not enough.

He’d spent so much of his life – too much of his life – keeping it as some dirty secret, because he’d been too afraid of losing Bucky to say anything about it. Had let it slowly pick and eat away at him when he chose that his feelings for Bucky would be the _one_ thing in his life he’d run from instead of confronting in his life.

Bucky must feel the sudden racing of his heart against his own chest because he pulls back just a little and tilts his head. The question and worry spread across his face. Steve licks his lips. “Buck. You know, right? You gotta know.”

Bucky says nothing. His face says nothing. He suddenly hears an echo of Bucky’s voice in his head from way back in his memory palace: _(“I swear Rogers, you run all on stupid,” he grinned fondly. Mouth and teeth bloodied to match Steve’s own, leaning against a brick wall. “And somehow down the road, you got that confused with courage.”_

Well, he’s proving Bucky right. It only pushes Steve further and closer to the edge of the chasm. “What I was in – whatever it was, that was all I’ve wanted since I was fifteen years old. It was a lie and I know that, but it was still the truth Buck,” Steve takes a breath, and notices how Bucky swallows.

“I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember and that hasn’t changed.”

He says it like a challenge; daring Bucky to accuse otherwise because it’s better than the vulnerability he’s feeling now, gaping wide inside his gut 

It’s easier to say than he imagined. Maybe it’s because of the colossal truth of it that Bucky must have been able to see without ever needing the words. The world doesn’t crash or erupt in brimstone fire. The world is silent, only their shared breaths between them. Bucky’s lips part and there’s an echo of something…sad in his eyes that makes Steve want to crawl inside of him and fix whatever it is going in there that he can’t even begin to understand. He needs Bucky to say something. Anything.

He expects a soft let-down. He expects in a few moments to hear Bucky telling him that he only sees him as an ally. Maybe even a friend down the line and they will have to leave it like that if they want to move forward. And it would kill him, the thought alone of hearing it does it. It always had.

Back then, Steve always pictured back then before the war, when he and Bucky would get drunk and he could allow his muddled brain to dawdle in the what if’s, that Bucky would never leave him like he always feared, if he told him the truth. But instead, would sit him down and tell him gently that he loves Steve too, wouldn’t trade him for the world. Would say all the right things and Steve would have to nod, despite his heart breaking and fight his best to hide it when Bucky would say that it was only as a brother, as family, and Steve would grow out of it.

Those fantasies usually ended with Steve breaking his hand off of Bucky’s face or _wanting_ to break his face, because it wasn’t some phase that you could get over. And fuck him, if Bucky thought this was something he didn’t try to get over every single time before he realized it was a losing battle. That it didn’t kill him every day knowing he could never have Bucky and have to grow to accept he’ll have to settle for half-happiness for the rest of his life, when Bucky would end up married, happy and in love with someone other than him.

But here now, in reality, Bucky reaches for Steve and hugs him again, his right hand cradling the back of Steve’s head and mutters, “Steve.”

It's not reciprocity, but Steve sags; powerless to Bucky's touch just as always and grips him back around his broad shoulders. Steve's reddening eyes clench shut, fighting against the burning build of emotion growing in his chest and spreading like live wire. It should be impossible, but somehow Bucky holds him closer. Steve opens his mouth to say more, but stops himself and buries his face against the collar of Bucky's shirt.

He wants to say that he wants to start over from here and now. He wants to say that the past is in the past and they have the world and future and each other to move forward towards.

But he also _remembers._

Remembers when he just had Bucky like another extension of his arm; known around the block as “ _that Rogers kid and Barnes_.” No one called Bucky by his first name. There were too many fresh looking kids around the neighbourhood named James. James never stuck with Steve.

Remembers having Bucky around when he didn’t want him; when he just wanted to be alone. Sick and disgusting with snot on his face and sickness pooling out of his pores, and hating the idea of Bucky seeing him this way. Weak, stranded and marked for dead, when Bucky was growing taller, graduating and becoming more handsome – the apple of every dame’s eye – while Steve got the flu every transition from fall into winter and allergies from winter into spring like clock work. Bucky didn't care. Bucky never cared.

Still, Steve didn’t want him around; in fact, hated it when Bucky shoved his nose into his business and made sure he was around. When Bucky would come knocking on his door, passing off on a date to make sure Steve wasn’t bored out of his mind, alone in bed.

He remembers telling his Ma more than once to make up excuses at the door so Bucky wouldn’t come in on the days when his sickness got terrible. Pathetic. Steve told himself it wasn't out of shame, but it was out of concern for Bucky. Bucky, who had so much potential and shouldn't be held back by a dying Steve, or so the nuns whispered when they thought Steve couldn't hear. If he was gonna die like they said, better to push Bucky onto other friendships and relationships while he had the stubborn breath to do it.

And so now in the real world, he’s not going to hold it back again. He’s not going to apologize for how he feels about Bucky. How he knows he'll always feel about Bucky. And Bucky, glorious, perfect Bucky, doesn’t even give him challenge Steve. After all this time, still surprising him.

 “You smell the same,” Bucky mutters out of nowhere, breath hot and moist. “After all this time.” His shaky laugh sounds mystified. Steve is glad his face is hidden from Bucky so he can’t see the way that throws him. How badly his world just shook again, with Bucky’s outward confidence of knowing him, no matter how small. He’ll take it. Steve will take anything Bucky is willing to offer him for as long as it takes. Thankful that Bucky isn’t pushing him away after knowing the truth after all this time.

"We’re a fucking pair.” Steve says and by miracles, Bucky snorts. It tickles and Steve’s shoulder lodges Bucky off a little. It shouldn’t sound so beautiful. Steve feels a smile tug on his mouth and Bucky pulls back to look at him at one arm’s length. His eyes crinkle at the sides. 

“So what now?” Steve asks quietly. He hates having to ask; to bring the outside world back around them and the sanctuary they’ve made. He knows what _he_ wants: he wants to get the hell out of this hospital. The four walls have been suffocating him and Steve never, wants to see the inside of a hospital ever again in his life.

He wants Bucky. It’s nothing new or surprising; he’s always wanted Bucky, even before he knew what that meant. But he can’t have that, Bucky has made that clear to him and he’s accepted it.

He wants to start a new life with him, whatever he can get. He wants to begin to know this person in front of him. Someone he believes that he knows the bare bones of, and yet also carries so many new layers, and Steve’s ready to learn them. He thinks Bucky is ready to let him.

Steve wants HYDRA wiped out. He needs to see _every single fraction_ and molecule of them scrubbed clean out of the earth and salted. He knows they destroyed the last of the major three, but there must be more building in the shadows. More people who need to be accounted for and he wants to be the one to do it with his bare hands. He wants them to pay.

“To start? Getting you out of here,” Bucky answers.

Steve sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. It’s grown out since he’s been asleep and the fringe flops in his eyes. “Good. Every second I’m in this place is a second I’m letting HYDRA rebuild themselves. They need to be taken out.”

A muscle in Bucky’s jaw tightens. Steve know that look, boy, does he know it. It hasn’t changed a bit.

“Bucky.”

“Steve.”

“ _No_.”

“You’re not going after them Steve.” Bucky flat out says. Like that’s that.

Steve has a moment of wondering if Bucky forgot who he’s talking to, using that tone and those selective words. But Bucky doesn’t seem to care that he’s pushing all of Steve’s warning buttons at all. Already getting to his feet like that’s that. Steve glares up at him. “ _Just who_ – don’t boss me around Bucky! I mean it.”

“Look. You can bust arms dealers all the live long fucking day with your pals for all I care. But HYDRA is off limits.” Bucky is unmoved by Steve’s glower. “And good luck trying to do otherwise.”

Steve works his jaw. Bucky only gives him a half-smile, shrugging a shoulder. It has proud, older brother Bucky written all over it. “Try me. Seriously. It’ll be funny,” and he heads for the door. A quick rise of panic pangs through Steve’s veins, all fight simmering. 

“Where’re you going?” Steve asks, making to stand.

 "Getting the car for us,” Bucky says, still heading for the door and then turns with his hand on the door knob. “Eat that.”

Steve ignores the bag of food; he’d already forgotten it. _To go where?_

“I’ll be back,” Bucky says, softly, realizing.

Steve wishes there could be better light to admire him from this new distance. He’s changed since the last he saw him active, and not only physically. Bucky looks nothing like he used to:  his hair is cut, but still longer than he’s ever had it, brown hair curled under his ears. He’s a wall of solid bulk and muscle, thick everywhere in ways he never could hope to be. He was whip cord lean before the draft and skin and bones throughout Europe.

It’s what Steve sees beneath all of that that throws him. There’s a sense of self and defined purpose buzzing beneath Bucky’s skin. It doesn’t dilute the mysterious aura around him that he still carries, the danger – that he has the ability to disappear into the shadows if he wished.

There’s a new man staring at Steve and it’s exhilarating to think of discovering who that could be.

Steve refuses to ask him to promise that like a child. He shelves the HYDRA issue for another time, because like hell is he taking this sentence lying down. He’ll have to work his way around whatever it is Bucky has in place to stop him. “As long as you get me the hell out of this place.”

“If you’re climbin’ the walls I’m already on the ceiling.” And he walks out.

 

* * *

 

If Steve doubted Bucky’s confidence before, he’s not anymore. His pin-code is denied when he tries to use his phone to scan the old data he had access to back in Europe with Sam. When he uses a false proxy to try another route, he’s boxed out with a shuffling algorithm he’s seen before. It has Natasha’s name written all over it.

Steve grips his phone tight enough it cracks the screen and Bucky hears it, walking ahead of him in the parking lot and turns around with a curious look on his face Steve sees right through. Like he had no clue what Steve was testing behind his back.

They drive in circles for close to an hour. Bucky cuts a corner and then another. And another. Shaking off and narrowing down any suspects who may be tailing them to wherever Bucky is taking them. It’s getting Steve a little stir-crazy, still unsure if the place Bucky is taking them is even in New York or if he’ll be exiting the city soon. But that question is answered when Bucky finally starts going down different roads, signalling that he’s finally going to their true destination. The busy New York scenery gradually begins to change into something quieter and Steve starts to realize where they’re heading.

Bucky turns the car up a one-way street; a quaint neighbourhood with rows of tall brownstones and slides into a perfect parallel park. Steve’s looking out the window, studying them. They resemble nothing like the pre-war grey building he remembers from his dream. There’s something warm about their structure. A call back to the past. 

Bucky knocks on Steve’s passenger window from outside, dragging him out of the nostalgia haze that settled. He didn’t even notice he got out of the car. Bucky has Steve’s large duffle over one shoulder and gestures behind to the apartment with a key in his gloved hand --  _you wanna get out?_

Steve does and gets a good look around the neighbourhood; a few cars and cyclists glide down the road at a boring twenty mile an hour limit. Down the street is a neighbourhood children’s playground where he can hear distant cheerful screeches. He knows this road, this street – West 11th – and he can still see what it used to look like phased over his eyelids. He remembers how out of reach these homes looked like to folks like him.

Steve looks back to Bucky who gives him a look, already standing at the top of the stairs in front of the black door. He hopes he doesn’t look as touched and in awe as he feels.

“I know,” calls Bucky. “Who knew we’d move on up to West Greenwich.” Steve can’t help the laugh that Bucky is able to pull from his chest. Bucky smirks. “You owe me five dollars by the way.” Steve jogs up the steps to meet him as Bucky unlocks the door. “What?”

“I told you I would find us a nice place after the war ended,” Bucky says, there’s a teasing tone to his voice but also, an air of uncertainty.

 

_(It was Bucky’s turn at night watch, but Steve had noticed the bags under Bucky’s eyes that refused to go away. Had begun to fall familiar to the heavy way he’d been carrying himself and volunteered._

_Which of course, earned a heated glare that would shoot a regular man dead by the force of it. Bucky had glared told him very loudly to fuck off, not giving a damn about public insubordination, and to give him some breathing room. That only made Steve dig his heels in harder, stick closer, until their combined bull-headedness led to them both sharing the night post._

_“I’m gonna find us some place nice when we get outta this hell Steve,” Bucky finally said after a long silence that went from tense to something familiar and a shade of comfortable. It made Steve’s shoulders ease up. “East Greenwich, Manhattan…” Bucky had said. Dernier’s rotgut was in his gloved hands while he and Steve sat under a tree at camp. There was barely a sip left. Bucky had drank it all himself._

_“You planning on marrying the queen?” Steve remarked and felt Bucky’s elbow dig into his side._

_“M’serious. You, me and East Greenwich. You watch.” He took another swing is grimaced before handing it to Steve who drank it just because._

_Steve finished it, not wanting to see Bucky drink any more and wiped his mouth, wincing after the burn._ _“Like we can afford it.”_

_Bucky gave him an unimpressed look. “You’re Captain America. And quit shittin’ on our dreams.”_

_“Right.”_

_“Five bucks says yer wrong.”_

_“You don’t have_ one _dollar.”_

_“Fuck you Rogers.”_

_Steve chuckled lowly and knocked his knee to Bucky’s out of habit. “Whatever you say Buck.”)_

 

“Yeah. Yeah you did Buck,” Steve just manages to say when Bucky pushes the front door open.

“Well, cough up pal.”

* * *

 

 

The house is huge and it’s clear already just standing in the foyer that splits; an arch way to the right leads to a living room while the rest of the apartment goes on through the den on the left. Steve walks through it, hearing Bucky drops his keys somewhere and shrug out of his leather coat from behind him and follow, giving Steve space to explore. Immediately, it’s obvious that Bucky hadn’t just gotten this place. The den looks lived in, like Bucky had spent the most time there.

The walls are white with black detailing on the window sills and doorways. Sparse pieces of random abstract art adorned on the walls. There’s a fireplace at the far end of the room, a large bookshelf with a growing collection. Curious, Steve wanders up to it and picks one out that looks second hand. _The Munich Mannequins_. Steve puts it back and turns to Bucky, who has stripped off the layers he’d been in: the ball cap, the glasses, jacket and gloves. He looks almost bare in just a shirt, jeans and socks.

“How long have you been living here?” Steve asks, not missing the irony that while he was scouring the world for Bucky, he’d been in his own backyard.

“Two months, give or take,” Bucky answers, “I haven’t gotten much done.” He means the den; that has enough room for so much that the spaces show it. There’s a table that has a scatter of maps on it, floor plans and a notepad but that’s all the furniture there is.

“Kitchen is down that way,” Bucky nods further down as he walks through the hall. Steve follows, feeling awkward for the first time in his life around Bucky. They pass what appears to be a dining room, considering the chandelier hanging from the ceiling and reach the kitchen. It’s metallic and shiny. A tall window letting in the afternoon light. Bucky opens the fridge and pulls out a jug of what look like iced tea.

The silence is getting unbearable – the obvious question begging to be said and so Steve bites the bullet. “Buck, what am I doing here?”

Bucky reaches for two cups and sets them down, taking a real sweet time about it. If this place is meant to be a haven to lay low, Bucky has gotten it all wrong. Steve doesn’t have to point out how many kill zones he can name in the kitchen alone, and that's disregarding the rest of the house. Bucky already has to know it. Steve has already counted about six open windows and possible sniper vantage points, which means Bucky has to too. And yet Bucky moves calmly around the floor, pouring himself and Steve a generous drink.

“I want you to stay here with me.”

Those eight words knock Steve sideways. It’s not a command, not in the slightest, but an offer. An offer that means a lot of Bucky by the way he says it. Steve recovers and sighs, looking at the marble table. “Bucky.” He doesn’t want to argue but Bucky’s not making it easy, “I was serious.”

“So was I,” Bucky says. “Look,” he fits a lock of his hair behind his ear, “this place was never just meant for me Steve, it was for the both of us.”

It takes a second for that to absorb: that Bucky had this place for _months_ , with the intention to share it with Steve. The same person he’d been running from since the fall of SHIELD.  “I’m not saying you have to be here every single second of the day. If avenging with your team is what you wanna do, then do it. I’m not stopping you.”

“But?”

“But you come back,” Bucky presses, “to where you have a home. That’s all I’m asking from you.”

 _Home._ Steve had forgotten what that word even meant, how it used to make him feel. What was home anymore? He’d been without it ever since he came out of the ice. It was like the universe was mocking him; having him wake up in New York of all places to see the place he knew be turned on its head.

Home had meant Brooklyn, but Brooklyn was never the same and it just hurt being on the same streets he used to frequent in his youth and see it as something else. Something greyer and dull, a cruel mockery, when he walked it alone. But home also meant Bucky, and Steve thinks it still can be. That no matter what, he can place himself anywhere in the world with Bucky, and begin to be able to call it home.

And Bucky…Bucky’s offering a home to him. Bucky’s offering himself. How could he even begin to fathom a response where he says no to it?

“Alright,” Steve says and Bucky’s crow’s feet crinkle.

“Good,” and then, “drink that.”

Steve picks up the cool glass, “what is it?”

“Organic apple cider,” he smiles lopsidedly. “I made it.”

“ _What?_ ”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth lilts up even more in a small smug smirk, there’s a glint in his eye. “Should I feel insulted?”

“Well…” Steve drags, “I haven’t tried it yet.” He ignores how Bucky’s full on smile makes his stomach flip. He’d expected this whole time to feel wrong footed around Bucky and force himself to recover from it each time, but the surprise he feels has nothing to do with that. It’s over how easy the budding rapport comes out of his mouth. How it gives him a flicker of hope that this won’t be as difficult and estranging as he’d feared.

Bucky nudges him lightly on the side, urging him to taste it. “Alright, alright,” Steve says lightly and brings the cup to his lips. Steve groans around the brim, the taste refreshing and a godsend from all the water he’d been drinking during his recovery in the hospital. He drains it in three large gulps, not realizing how thirsty he was. Bucky leans his metal hand on the kitchen counter with an appeased look on his face.

“You don’t have to rub it in,” Steve grumbles, a heat crawling up the back of his neck, flushing his ears.

“I didn’t say anything,” Bucky says, but his tone is all teasing and nudges the jug closer to Steve before opening the fridge, retrieving fresh looking vegetables and a package of parchment wrapped meat he opens up on the counter.  “You hungry?” The answer to the question doesn’t seem to actually matter as Bucky takes out a cutting board from a drawer and reveals the duck breasts from the package.

Steve drinks the next glass with a lot more restraint and watches in silent awe as Bucky sharpens a chef’s knife with impressive precision. He starts to score it before moving onto the heirloom tomatoes he sets up on the cutting board.

* * *

 

 

It’s obviously not his first rodeo; at home and comfortable in his space. Steve remembers Bucky being a terrible cook back in the day; getting egg shells in the bowl almost all the time just to have to pick them out before Steve could make fun of him about it. Cutting himself more than the vegetables he chopped for dinner and somehow, always managing to burn the top of a homemade cake but have the insides be underdone. Now, his knife cuts are done with almost chef-like accuracy – even and done in exact sizes. The way his metal hand holds the plump vegetable softly in one grip while his flesh hand moves in hard strokes does something weird to Steve’s belly.

“If you’re cooking,” Steve answers lowly, shifting a little to hide the sudden feeling of uselessness. Bucky says nothing and flicks a look to Steve quickly, who tries not to shuffle awkwardly on his feet. He feels thirteen all over again; nervous when Beth Bailey kissed his cheek on a dare and ran away while all the kids in the schoolyard made a ruckus over it. Thirteen and thinking he’d die from the heat burning his cheeks. He hopes he’s not as bright as the tomato Bucky finishes dicing.

“Well Steve, make yourself useful,” Bucky says and hands the knife handle to him so Steve can take over with the onions. Steve had been better at cooking than Bucky, but that never said much.

Bucky turns the oven on and dips his head, a wise smirk grows on his face before its quickly hidden by the way his dark locks fall from behind his ear, “and maybe then I’ll teach you the recipe if you don’t fuck up.”

It’s a goad – and obvious goad and Steve smiles, huffing out a breath of laughter. “You’re on.”

 

* * *

 

Steve can’t pinpoint when exactly Bucky cracked upon a bottle of cabernet shiraz but by the time their dinner is done; a meal of tagliatelle and duck breast ragout, _(Bucky taught Steve to make pasta from scratch),_ Steve can’t remember when he’d eaten better; when he had a home cooked meal to share with another person that wasn’t out of a can or made in a rush for pure survival before the upcoming mission. When he’d been happier last.

They eat their dinner on the floor because Bucky still doesn’t have a dining table, which he explains quietly behind a glass of red wine that he’ll get up to doing for them since it was never a pressing issue before. All of his meals before were eaten in his room or the den.

Steve says nothing after that admission – _for them_ \-- and drinks a large gulp to swallow down the swell of unease that closes like a fist around his throat. Bucky has already made plans for the future to accommodate Steve’s presence in his home. It pulls him back into reality. After having spent just a few hours with Bucky, it’s still enough to make the outside world muddle and trickle away in the background.

Steve can’t repress how easily and how quickly succumbing to the peace they created was. How the background noise and internal brain noise just shut off by _just being with Bucky,_ and not his responsibilities. His debts. But the elation doesn’t last, can’t last. Or have any hope to stop the fear and the anxiety of what a few weeks, _a few months_ might do -- will do, to his will power and his decision to leave to complete his mission. 

The silence simmering now is palpable. Like Bucky has read his mind and it sours the previous mood. Both knowing and acknowledging that that specific conversation bubbling between them will need to be seriously addressed. And yet both deeming this moment isn’t the right one. For the time being. Still, it’s obvious enough to cut the comforting, companionable mood short.

Bucky’s face does a complicated thing, staring down at his half eaten second portion settled in his lap before making some sort of decision and gets to his feet smoothly. He leaves the dishes on the counter. “I’m the next door over past the bathroom,” he says, voice dull. “Yours is before the kitchen.”

Steve nods, looking up at him and hoping he’ll turn his blue eyes to his. But Bucky doesn’t, fixated at his metal hand on the table. His strong jaw line is angled toward him and clenches. He looks tired. But not in the sleepy, drowsy way. In a way Steve is all too familiar with, seeing it reflected in the mirror everyday since he was thawed out. “Yeah, I remember.”Bucky nods. “I’m going to bed.” He turns away with a barely audible goodnight muttered between them and Steve watches him go and disappear through his bedroom door. The lock snapping in the newly bred silence and Steve feels sick with guilt.

**Author's Note:**

> Again: The location of where Steve and Bucky live is real. So if you want to get a visual on where Bucky and Steve live in this story, please feel free to check this link out. [ here](https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/greenwich-village/45-east-9th-street/5289)


End file.
